Ball x Pit combines the auto-firing, skill-blending roguelike stylings of Vampire Survivors with a bouncy arcade homage to Breakout. As you vent🧸ure into the city-sized hole left by an apocalyptic, city-des❀troying strike, the undead denizens march forth to force you back. To stop them, you'll spit out an endless stream of projectiles, which bounce and ricochet off your opponents, dealing damage with each strike.

Aim right, and your projectiles will ping-pong around the backlines of your advancing enemies, stacking up multiple strikes as they go. Eventually, they'll make their way back out of those lines of infan📖try, flying back towards you. They might bounce chaotically around for a fe♋w moments, but if you're well-positioned, you can grab them early, shooting them back out towards your cursor to get the optimal ricochet.

Some projectiles are simple instances of ballistic damage. They'll bump into an oncoming enemy with no real stopping power, but their strength in numbers means they're an important part of your defenses. What's much more fun, however, are your 'special' projectiles. These might freeze, poison, or electrocute oncoming enemies, eventually letting you juggle a whole host of bonus damage effects that might further synergize with those basic projectiles from earlier; one upgrade means that a burning enemy will set fire to projectiles that hit them, which will then go on to deal additional damage to the next target they hi🌼t; a frozen enemy might shatter when they're hit, dealing damage t♍o units around them.

Those upgrades are the next part of Ball x Pit's Vampire Survivors homage. Certain upgrades fuse together - a ball of mud and an orb of poison combining to the AoE Swamp effect, or a slow-moving ball of metal synergizing with a lightning effect to shove a lightning rod into the heads of oncoming enemies. The correct combinations can even combine w𒅌ith each other, creating powerful fusions that stitch together a whole host of different effects, all while offering you extra upgrade space so you can do even more with your build.

When it all comes together, it's like a laser show of different effects, many of them spar♔king off one another to bounce madly around the arena, which gradually widens as you delve further into the pit. That means more units coming towards you at once, w♓hich means you're at greater risk - if an enemy reaches your end of the screen, it'll leap towards you, dealing damage. You've also got to consider where you stand compared to all those oncoming foes - more width means more room to manoeuvre, but it also means more enemies to get close too. Spend too long standing within range of an opponent, and they'll make you pay for it.

The Ball x Pit demo only grants access to one 15 minute run, which suggests that you'll be able to cook up even more on other maps. But staying alive for 15 minutes is no easy task, so you'll want to make use of your time outside the pit to level up. In an i🌌mpressive piece of commit💜ment to the bit, Ball x Pit combines its city builder-style progression systems with yet another Breakout homage. To gather resources or complete buildings, you'll need to fire your units into them, hoping that as they cannon off one location they'll ping off another so that you can get as much as possible out of each day's harvest. It's not the most obvious solution, and it can be frustrating to waste an entire turn on a missed shot, but there's something to be said for sticking so closely to the brand.

I try out a lot of roguelikes in every Next Fest, and this time has been no exception. But Ball x Pit immediately grabbed my attention. It would be a shame, then, that I waited so long to stumble acroꦅss it, except for the fact that I only found it because the demo's being extended. That means you can still pick it up for a little while after Next Fest ends, which means that Ball x Pit is going to continue to entirely swallow up my free time for a good while yet.

My other favorite Next Fest roguelike is a Balatro-style take on slot machines that seems like it might be Localthunk's nightmare.

Enter , the siren song of which has been calling to me from the Steam Next Fest charts all week. For me, the personal selling point was not only the clumsily-placed duck pun, so much as the fact that Escape from Duckov is an entirely single-plღayer experience.꧑ Not for me the sweaty, heart-pounding experience of attempting to flee while chased down by a player who's a far better shot than me.

Instead, a rather more sedate experience, the heavy footfall of fast-moving combat bo♏ots replaced with the gentle plap-plap-plap of duck feet on soil. There's an unsurprising goofiness to Escape from Duckov, helped along in my case by the fact that I really pushed the character creator to its limits. My duck was decidedly topheavy, its towering cranium and glaring angry eyes not exactly stealthy, but that doesn't really matter in a single-player game.

Exactly how threatening Duckov is compared to Tarkov, I couldn't really tell you, but I'll𓆏 take a guess that the answer hovers somewhere around 'dramatically less'. While there's a sense of some kind of ruined civilization, and various packs of weapon-toting bandits who are keen to run up on you, those bandits are all also ducks, and the isometric perspective means that you have a good idea of what's coming towards you.

St🌊ill, while you're not necessarily going to be challenged from a combat perspective, there's still quite a lot of depth to Escape from Duckov that I definitely w♏asn't expecting. A web of quests, upgrades, crafting components, and base customization unfurls pretty quickly, and while you're gated off from most of it pretty well, it's immediately apparent that this isn't some low-effort parody. Exactly why it's duck-themed is something I'm still not sure about, but Escape from Duckov seems like a genuine attempt to find a new niche in a genre that I feel has been 'complete' for a long time now.

Games like Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown filled up what little space was available in the multiplayer extraction shooter market pretty early, and they've dominated ever since. Many comers have tried to take a piece of the action, but even some of the biggest studios have crashed and burned in the attempt. Fundamentally, it's a genre where there's not a huge amount of room for innovation beyond the tension that made these games fun in the first place - but Escape from Duckov seems to have found it. The tense atmosphere and simulation-level combat of Tarkov,ꦺ combined 𒁃with a community that's had years to sharpen its skills, means that I've got no desire to jump into a multiplayer version. But Duckov not only piqued my interest, it offered a new viewpoint on a genre that I'd personally written off.

I carved through my first dangerously addictive Steam Next Fest demo with the power of 'shotgun magic' in this mystical twist on Hotline Miami.

OK, that makes sense – based on the information in the above paragraph I fit the motive of someone who would enjoy a game like thꦍis. But those of you who have thumbed my character profile, studied the deep༺ lore, will know that I really did not like developer Microids Studio Lyon's last game, Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express – in particular how it adapted the central mystery and modernized it for its 2023 setting. What's changed?

Disco fever

I don't want to say it's all to do with the '70s setting. But it does have a lot to do with it. Why has the seemingly unchange🤡d moustachioed detective suddenly been transplanted into the '70s when we last saw him in the present day? I know we're playing detectives here but maybe with this one let's not ask a gift horse too many questions.

As Poirot struts his stuff into the Chez ma Tante nightclub, his walk cycle giving plenty, it just worღks. He's friends with the nightclub owner, and makes a point to order a house cocktail – the 1957 – that's named after the year the club was founded. Yes, it'll bꦅe a clue later. There's a botched wedding proposal to a business woman. The ring has been stolen. It's tutorial time!

This fresh twist on the opening scenes to Death on the Nile r🥂eally work well here, the tutorial a simple mystery that's compelling to unravel. There's a bit of a looser feeling to how Poirot assembles his mind map of mysteries too, where it feels easy to review character profiles and evidence, but not too pushy with how you should do it. M🌠aybe this is just a well-spun tiny mystery to get me started, but I'm much more compelled by this one than the early hours of Murder on the Orient Express.

Whether Death on the Nile can keep up the momentum is another question, but the opening does serve to introduce us to all the major players of the mystery to come – and I feel positive about them at least so far. It also neatly introduces us to Jane Royce, another detective following in Poirot's footsteps. She's an immediately more likeable presence than Orient Express' Joanna Locke, and her presence seems to be more elegan🐲tly weaved into the story.

Despite not loving Locke, or a lot about how the Orient Express mystery was adapted and extended in the last game, I did think the dual-protagonist mechanics showed a lot of promise during the very end of the game. Dﷺeath on the Nile teasing an expansion and evolution of that set-up definitely has me curious. But for now, I'll have to wait and see when our murderous cruise will set off down the famous river. , PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

This Steam Next Fest demo mixes Journey with The Last Guardian, having me run through gorgeous fields with my fluffy herd

Wearing its Game Boy vibes very clearly on its sleeve, Mina the Hollower puts you in the shoes of the mousy Mina. A Hollower and inventor by trade, Mina's dual specialties are perfect for the quest she finds herself drawn into - the technology she created for the city of Ossex is playing up, and the city's mayor thinks there might be something more than planned obso🐼lescence at play.

That's almost instantly confirmed when the ship that's ferrying Mina to Ossex is wrecked. Grabbing her choice of three weapons in another, Pokemon-shaped, Game Boy homage, Mina battles her way through the slightly stunted sprites that stand between her and her goal. While her squat opponents are a deeply effective throwback to the limited file space of the games🍌 that inspired Mina the Hollower, Mine herself has an entire bag of tricks at her disposal.

As well as your choice of weapon - I went for a mace that Mina throws forth with some real vigor - I was thro❀wing knives and axes with deadly precision within a few moments of the game's beginning. And as a Hollower, Mina also has the ability to duck underground, using her tunnelling abilities to escape under obstacles and even turn them into weapons to use against her foes. The Hollowers are a well-established force within Ossex, as you discover when you come across your first hideout, where you ℱcan swap weapons and currencies before leaping back into the action.

Very clearly riffing of Link Awakening's presentation, Mina the Hollower follows up with a story and setting that's steeped in the grand, theatrical aesthetic of the Castlevania games. It's a blend that might not work, especially within the faux-retro setup that Yacht Club established with Shovel Knight. But it's almost perfect here, such an authentic mashup of ideas fro๊m this era of gaming that I honestly wish I had an actual Game Boy to play it on, rather than stretching it over my entire PC screen. It's an intensely vivid, genuine reincarnation, and while I never truly believed that Yacht Club would make anything else, I'm still shocked by just how effective a pastiche Mina the Hollower immediately proves to be.

Want a different flavor of Zleda homage? My dream The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time successor is finally playable in Steam Next Fest, and I'm pleased to report it nails the Nintendo 64 vibes.

It's great to see a take on the Danganronpa-flavored killing game format from a fresh perspective with new creatives. After all, while some thought The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, from some of the Danganronpa creators, was veering too close to that series at first, post-launch it became clear it was actuall♒y a very different thing. As great as that game is (♏with plenty of nods towards killing games), it does mean some fans are left wondering where they can get another game like Danganronpa. This dev studio's answer was to make its own!

Spark Joy Chaos

Let's start with the massive similarities to Danganronpa, a murder mystery killing game that sees a group of students – each an 'Ultimate' in some field (such as Ultimate Programmer) – trapped in Hope's Peak Academ🐼y and forced to play a killing game to escape. In Kumitantei, a group of 'Absolutes' are trapped in the elite Janus Institute and forced to play a killing game. Even the presentation, how you exp🅺lore, UI, and character designs nods towards Danganronpa an awful lot.

Yet, there's also plenty that sets Kumitantei apart from its inspiration. While some of the characters feel like they're riffing on Danganronpa character type mainstays, there are some real fun and unique characterizations here. There's the upper class Shigure Ogasawara, the Absolute Meteorologist, who's always clutching an umbrella. There's Benjiro Minesuga, ✤the tiny Absolute Beekeeper always surrounded by his hive.

I also love that our main character, Himari Sanada, is the Absolute Barista – it already f🐬eels like it gives her a unique perspective. In the best way, it's like a game made up of everyone's unique Danganronpa OCs. I also find the little watercolor portraits for each character in their bond menu quite charming.

Crucially, Kumi𒈔tantei is set in the 1980s, and at the moment the historical setting seems to be adding plenty of color to the atmosphere. The Janus Institute they're trapped in appears to be even older, and clues tease important plot threads that in turn link back to the 1950s. I really like this generational approach, and even though this demo just gives us access to the very opening of the game I'm pretty curious about where it will g♍o.

Which means I've also not seen any murder mysteries play out, or any of the retro mini-games mentioned on the store page. I have tried the Battle Mode demo, a taster of a card-based persuasion game about playing winning suits and scoring higher than your opponent to gain an advantage on a sliding health scale. Maybe I'm not used to it, but I didn't find this part nearly as compelling as the storytelling, and I hope class trials won't involve this too heavily. I'm looking forward to seeing how it unfolds. .

Of the Devil takes what I love about Ace Attorney and Danganronpa to create a cyberpunk legal mystery like little else

Stellar Blade's PC demo is a free version that leads up to the end of the first major bossfight. There's an intro cutscene, a brief tutorial, and some exploration that lets you start to get to grips with the game's extensive upgrade tree, and for a game of this size that's dropping its PC port in the same week as Next Fest, it's a relatively chunky demo. After th💛at first boss fight, there's even a second battle that you're thrown into, a few hours into the rest of the game.

Those two fights were easily the highlight of what I played of Stellar Blade. The satisfying 'chiiing' of 🐈a successful parry or the balletic red lines of a perfect dodge both encourage a deeper connection with the combat than simply holding down the guard button or spamming dodge-roll. There's decent weight behind the boss' attacks, fitting of statures that tend to tower over Eve. The trouble is, I'm fighting through much better bosses elsewhere right now, and this demo is nowhere close to convincing me to make the jump.

I'm working my way gradually through 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elden Ring Nightreign with my friends at the moment, and it's indicative of the problem that I had with Stellar Blade almost immediately. While there's a competent soulslike in there, it's very clearly a game that relies on style over substance. That's clear from its opening cutscene, and whi💎le thꦬere's little need to rehash the conversation about Eve's physique here, Shift Up found many more ways to show off visually than in other departments.

Its flashy, setpiece-filled intro and its gratuitously gory cutscenes quickly gave way to a dark, muddy city that was dangerously close to the iconic 'PS3 brown' color palette. Even in that relatively close-quarters environment, performance was an issue, and despite outshining the recommended s𓃲pecs I had to scale the graphics way back before I could get free of some distracting stuttering.

Elsewhere, it wasn't long before I was being waylaid by level design; having an enemy lying in wait behind a door might have been an homage to Dark Souls, but the fℱloaty physics puzzles are certainly a feature I don't really need from my soulslikes. The style of Stellar Blade's big moments is decent, but the substance of its moment-to-moment combat and traversal doesn't live up to the checks its cutscenes are writing. Eve's attacks are lightweight compared to her finishing moves, her response to getting smacked around a boss arena disappointingly🌱 clunky in the face of her apparent agility elsewhere.

It's hard, while playing Nightreign in the background, to not🍷 compare the two. And despite the chaos and rapid pace of the Elden Ring spin-off, there's no question which is the better game. Granted, Shift Up is making a leap into less-familiar territory with Stellar Blade, while FromSoftware is adapting technology it's spent years honing to a laser's edge. Stellar Blade is by no means a bad game, and nor is🐻 it entirely fair to compare it to anything Elden Ring-shaped, but it's certainly not good enough to have justified the discourse that's swirled around it, or to convince me to abandon my Nightreign condemned for Eve.

Check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Stellar Blade review to see what we thought of the original PS5 launch.

CloverPit is comfortably one of the biggest roguelikes in Steam Next Fest, sitting in the top ten across all three major charts. I can instantly see why. It's a game that immediately plugs into all of the horror stories you hear about howꦉ casino designers get punters to stay in place for hours at a time. Before you sits a traditional slot machine, and it's your job to use it to make increasing quantities of money, before the trapdoor floor beneath you opens up and sends you off to an unpleasant fate.

The slot machine functions as any traditional one-armed bandit might. You pull the lever, and the screen rolls around, paying out a small sum if you hit at least three of the same symbol in a row. Each round, you can choose whether you want to drop a small amount of money for a smaller number of spins, or increase your pay-in in hopes of a bigger payout. At the end of three rounds of spins, you'd betওter hope that you've made enough money back to pay off your deꦰbt.

The good news is that you've got multiple ways to improve your odds. The money you pay in does net you a small amount of interest, and if you manage to reach your next goal early, you'll also get an extra reward. There are also lucky trinkets that augment the stats of the slot machine; perhaps you'll get a free spin every so often, or increase the value of certa🦹in symbols while removing the likelihood of seeing others. There's a sense of buildcrafting even in the very early stages, and while luck does play a big part, you can certainly make some of that for yourself.

My favorite lucky charm is a maneko cat that pays out your banked interest every time you ge𝐆t three scoring combos in a single roll, which can really set your money climbing fast. That synergized excellently with the one time I managed to net a full jackpot - every slot on the machine showing the exact same symbol. It was enough to carry me through multiple deadlines, showering me with interest at the end of every round.

Unfortunately, it also meant that it really started to sting when I didn't trigger the cat. And it really hurt when I didn't hit anything at all. Sadly, that's sort of the nature of slot machines - there's nothing you can do to ensure you hit, so you've just got to pull the lever again and hope you come up better the next time, or the time after that. Very quickly, I was nestled into a dangerous loop - paying in my fee, yanking on the level, scooping up my winnings and paying off my unseen creditor. I was constantly hoping for the little bursts of good luck - the charm triggers, the big combo - that would net me my next good windfall. Even writing this, I'm꧃ itching to jump back in. Localthunk might have beaten the gambling allegations with Balatro, but CloverPit isn't shy about its similarities to the poker roguelike, and this time, I think the house might win.

For a far more wholesome roguelike, Moonlighter 2 is so good that I'm planning to jump straight back into its predecessor.

All ofও this happens from a top-down perspective, because d opts to let you experience its co-op tactical shooter gameplay in a manner reminiscent of Hotline Miami. Melee enemies rush towards you, making them relatively easy to pick off in your special ops gear, but those armed with guns will carefully seek you out, so it's up to you to fi💃nd a shot before they can spot you.

Doing so is a manner of using sightlines to your advantage. Phantom Squad is very keen to let you play with shadows, sneaking around enemies' lines of sight, or simply hiding behind a door and picking 💛them off with a silenced weapon as they run past you. The AI might not be the sharpest I've ever experienced, but🐲 it's relatively rare that it'll lose the run of itself, and it's good at delivering on its own objective if it can - I lost a hostage several times after a wayward kill attracted the attention of a guard, or even just by being spotted through a window.

All that means that you'll want to take advantage of Phantom Squad's planning screen. At any time, you can zoom out to get a blueprint-level look at your surroundings, marked wi🦩th important details including the rough locations of hostages or valuable objects that you need to try and protect. What makes this quick glance at the map more interesting, however, is the fact that you can draw on it, issuing instructions and details in real-time that can be shared with your team.

That's because Phantom Squad is really designed as a co-op experience. You can absolutely play it yourself (you're even given a couple of bonus self-revives in case you get knocked down without anyone around to help you out), but the magic is clearly in getting a crack team around you. The multiplayer aspect stems from your loadout, where different players can pick different gear and weapons, through planning, where it's your job to determine your approach, and into the game itself. Of course, all that pre-mission work is important, but even the best-laid plans are likely to fall apart in the arena of online co-op. A single missed shot can bring the entire thing crashing down around you, an🐼d it's then up to you to adapt o𒈔n the fly.

That's true from the very start of the very first mission. Literally titled 'Die ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚHard', you're dropped on the top of a skyscraper and tasked with fighting your way down, making sure to keep as many hostages as possible alive. That means no stray steps or stray bullets, because your enemies have an itchy trigger finger, and four players are definitely worse than one when it comes to giving them an excuse to use it. And when one misstep can be the difference between a flawless mission and a spectacular failure, you can be fairly sure that a few lines scrawled on a shared map aren't likely to help your squadmates keep their heads. Phantom Squad is just as much a co-op heist game as it is a leadership challenge, so you'd beꦇtter hope that one of you is up to the task.

I carved through my first dangerously addictive Steam Next Fest demo with the power of 'shotgun magic' in this mystical twist on Hotline Miami.

Our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide is a great starting placꦓe to learn more about downloading the demos. But for now, we've played through heaps of demos to find the ones we really recommend you check out before Steam Next Fest draws to a close. There's lots of good stuff in there, to the point where even narrowing it down to just 20 was hard. And I'm still feeling guilty about the demos I downloaded, but probably won't have time to play on top of 🐻this.

Can you have too much of a good thing? I'd argue no – because at the end of the day it's all about the possibilities of what you could have. And I'm here to help you on that journey. Keep following all our coverage for the highlights, but here's our top recommen🧔dations for what Steam Next Fest demos should really get downloaded for the weekend.

20. Herdling

Developer: Okomotive
Release date: TBC 2025

Herdling is a bit like a cross between The Last Guardian and Journey, having you assemble a group of cute calicorn critters to herd them safely from the city streets to the mountain home they crave to return to. There's some light puzzling at times in , which otherwise constan🎃tly moves you forward, occasionally pausing to ask you to navigate structures by pushing blocks and other such things. But where it really shines is where you're let loose on the fields, raising your stick to boost your companions while dashing along behind them, the music swelling. This demo is the game's opening, and allows you to experience some of those beats for yourself.

19. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault

Developer: Digital Sun
Release date: TBC 2025

Once again, shopkeeper-adventurer Will finds himself managing a store in , with a landlord hungry for cash. Though the world may have changed a bit following the events of the first game's ending, money still makes the world go around. Which means he has to set off on an adventure in order to nab loot that he can then sell. It's up to you how to push expeditions, and what you fill your limited backpack space with. Adding to that is tꦕhe idea of combination items, meaning even seemingly useless junk can be valuable if kept together. You๊ get a great taste of the initial loop in this introduc⭕tion to the game!

18. OFF

Developer: Mortis Ghost, Fangamer
Release date: August 15, 2025

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why recommend , a game that came out back in 2008? Well, because this is a loving and faithful remaster/remake that makes it really nice to get stuck into this cult classic. After all, this is the bizarre RPG that inspired Undertale, and that game's creator Toby Fox has even contributed to this new versioꦡn of OFF. Taking control of The Batter, your mission is simple: purify the world by traveling through its Zones and bashing the heck out of ghouls. Less simple is the world itse𝔍lf, a strange place that gets odder the more you explore it, and, as you'd expect from something that inspired Undertale, spirals out massively from there. The hefty demo includes the whole of Zone 1, so grab your bat and get involved!

17. Baby Steps

Developer: Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, Bennett Foddy
Release date: September 8, 2025

This laugh-out-loud and wince-worthy physics adventure comes from the mind of Getting Over It creator Bennet Foddy. While is certainly a bit more than just that infamously tough game about ascending, but now in 3D, the similarities are clear whenever you take a disastrous tumble. Playing as Nate, you end up transported to a world of muddy landscapes in which you need to relearn how to move your legs. Cue plenty of muddy faceplanting. This is the kind of game wher🐷e simply walking up a hill feels almost impossible, and you can lose about 30 minutes of progress in 30 seconds, which is also why we love it.

16. Morsels

Developer: Furcula
Release date: TBC 2025

While this top-down roguelike is full of all sorts of poop, bile, and nasty tooty noises, there's also an edge of cuteness about it. In , you're thrust into a world where large and visually upsetting creatures rule supreme, but you take control of the smaller critters looking to make a difference – the, well, morsels. Playing a little bit like The Binding of Isaac, if you had rec🔯harging shot ammo and could switch characters on the fly (up to three morsels can be recruited and bound to the d-pad at once during a run)ꦚ, this can be a brutal but satisfying chaotic world to master. Just watch out, as some creatures are just too big to defeat – if you see that snake come a-slithering, just run.

15. Hotel Barcelona

Developer: White Owls
Release date: TBC

is the long-awaited collaboration between two gaming legends – Suda 51, known for the likes of Killer7 and No More Heroes, and Swery65, known for Deadly Premonition and The Missing. In this demo, you quickly see the influence of both, taking control of Federal Marshal Justine as she explores a hotel for serial killers while also having another serial killer trapped inside of her who she can fuse with to become a powerful force of justice. Seeking revenge, she'll have to carve 💯through a host of other killers to track down her target, which means slashing through 2D roguelike levels with branching paths that are all parodies of horror movies. With access to the first area, this demo is a great introduction.

14. Hell is Us

Developer: Rogue Factor
Release date: September 4, 2025

It's hard to get a real sense of the "multi-map s൩panning secrets" promised in Hell is Us from the demo, but it does give you a great taste of just how unique and strange this game is. is set in a fictional civil war in the '90s, where the closed borders hide some bizarre 💎creatures. Thrust into action, combat is a bit soulslike in ൲style – while not being quite as punishing. But it's exploration that's really different, encouraging you to use a compass to get around and not giving you quest markers. You need to take your time and explore your curiosity yourself rather than switch off that part of your brain, and that's refreshing.

13. Holstin

Developer: Sonka
Release date: TBC

is another game set in the 90s about the horror lurking beneath society. Set in Poland, this inventive pixel art game mixes top-down exploration with over-the-shoulder shooting seamlessly. Looking from above, the camera can be rotated freely – even though it looks 2D. Aim your gun, and it'll seamlessly zoom in. It looks phenomenal in motion and✨ allows you to get up close and personal with some of Holstin's gnarlier designs. Like a cross between Silent Hill and Resident Evil, the horrors are strong even in this demo.

12. Possessor(s)

Developer: Heart Machine
Release date: TBC

If you found Hyper Light Breaker a bit too much of a departure from Hyper Light Drifter, you may prefer what developer Heart Machine is offering here with , which evolves some of the combat philosophies that underpinned that original indie classic in a fresh direction whi💖le exploring a brand new world. Side-scro♈lling action here is set within a ruined and flooded city. Precise platforming meets precise combat, all feeling rewarding when you string together the right moves to clinch a challenge by the skin of your teeth while making it look effortless.

11. Unbeatable

Developer: D-Cell Games
Release date: TBC 2025

Rhythm games don't always need to be more complicated to keep introducing new ideas. makes the most of a simple two-button approach to mak🐻e each song in this hefty demo feel like a nail-biting brawl. With a top lane and a bottom lane, it's all about jug♑gling incoming enemies as you tap away while also avoiding hazards. There's a lot of depth to be found on the harder difficulties. This demo also gives a taste of the story mode, which sees Beat and her band on the run from a government that's made music illegal, playing their music shows to fight the system. Now that's punk.

10. Dead as Disco

Developer: Brain Jar Games
Release date: TBC

The combat in Batman Arkham was 🙈always rhythmic, but Dead as Disco reimagines the approach to 3D brawls as truly set to music. BPM changes the speed of encounters, and the story mode fla꧟shes you be☂tween setpieces to match the mood of the track. This demo only briefly allows us to try a single proper level in what's teased to be a Mega Man-like set-up of goons and boss fights. Infinite Disco mode, meanwhile, gives us room to try plenty more tracks in a more simplistic but still flashy environment, and even import our own songs. Disco will never die.

9. No, I'm Not a Human

Developer: Trioskaz
Release date: Q3 2025

knows when to let its lo-fi grungy textures make you uneasy, and when to revel in the just-as-uncomfortable over-detail of the human body. When something happens to the sun that makes it dangerous to go outside in the day, and Visitors begin emerging from the earth to replicate humans, it's safest to stick together. But that means making sure you only let people into your house who you're sure you can trust. By night, you vet thꦑose seeking refuge by knocking at your door, and by day, you talk to the survivors and test them to see if they are really the humans they say they are. This demo gives you a few days to soak in t🧸he upsetting vibes.

8. Mina the Hollower

Developer: Yacht Club Games
Release date: October 31, 2025

The Shovel Knight developer can't stop striking the earth, though this time takes place from a top-down Game Boy-like perspective rather than being an NES-like 2D platformer. Mina the Hollower riffs on Zelda games made for the hardware, having♛ the adventurous hero explore a Castlevania-style horror-themed world, battling baddies and🌠 solving puzzles. The big twist is her Hollower power to, well, burrow, which is just as vital for getting the upper hand on foes as it is in navigating the world itself.

7. Azaran: Islands of the Jinn

Developer: Benji
Release date: TBC

From 2D Zelda to 3D Zelda! is a real love letter to that adventuring series on Nintendo 64. Anyone familiar with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Ti𓆏me will immediately feel the vibesꦑ when playing the Azaran demo, right the way down to how Zahn locks on to enemies, or how the camera pans around a dungeon. Almost every design decision here evokes those classic '90s vibes. But, with its Arabian Nights theme, Azaran: Islands of the Jinn also has its own personality that's worth getting to know, and is just fun to play. With most of the opening dungeon to play, this demo is well𝓡 worth playing for yourself.

6. Ratatan

Developer: TVT, Ratata Arts
Release date: July 24, 2025

This spiritual successor to the Pat⭕apon games on PSP made waves on Kickstarter. development team even includes members who worked on the original series. This time around, the rhythm action follows a roguelike structure, seeing your hero Ratatan return to Rataport between each run. Setting out each time with the cobuns in tow, you battle much bigger enemies and need to time strategies to make the most of the catchy soundtrack and take them down. The visual direction is gorgeous, and the music is sublime – the best way to see if this is so catchy it can get its hooks in you is🍬 to give it a try for yourself.

5. City of Voices

Developer: Kini Games
Release date: TBC

Loved The Rise of the Golden Idol (like we did in our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Rise of the Golden Idol review) and how that series presents its mysteries? But maybe want something a little less supernatural? Then is a demo you really need to check out. Co-developed by one of Golden Idol's writers and designers, with the rest of that team's blessing, this is essentially the same puzzle bones applied to a young girl's coming-of-age tale as she navigates bullying across school and her Acorn scout-like unit. Teasing a more myster꧋ious journey, this demo centers mostly on finding out who bullies are and how they did their deeds, which can be a bit upsetting without any later emotional release. But these conundrums are all very clever and have you make some tough deductions with just the right number of clues. Pay attention to what you're looking at!

4. Consume Me

Developer: Jenny Jiao Hsia, AP Thomson, Jie En Lee, Violet W-P, Ken "coda" Snyder
Release date: September 25, 2025

has already won several awards before even releasing, and after even a brief look, it's easy to see why. This is a life ꦿsimulation RPG with fantastic visual design and a very important message about growing up as a teen. Across both traditional life-sim style menus and very satisfyingly clicky minigames, you need to 'balance' the overwhelm of trying to make the most of your teenage years while dealing with a constant checklist of goals and pressure coming from all sides. All the mechanics work together to hammer the message home, but it's best played to really understand what Consume Me is going for, so give it a go!

3. After Inc: Revival

Developer: Ndemic Creations
Release date: June 17, 2025

This sequel to Plague Inc. dares to ask: what happens next? Players caused the disease-ridden apocalypse umpteenth times the first go around, but tackles rebuilding after the end of the world instead, a potentially more optimistic angle that's nice to see in the age we're living in. Somewhere between 4X strategy and a city builder, it challenges you to secure resources in order to keep your populace alive as you deal with a harsh world. Which also means having to make difficult decisions including,🗹 upsettingly, having to feed dogs to the citizens in order to keep them alive. Can you build a better future?

2. Crescent County

Developer: Electric Saint
Release date: TBC

Hop onto your motorbroom in and get ready to do some witchy racing, deliver packages, and hang out with your pals and crushes. What's more to say than that, really? It's all we needed to know to mash that download button like there was no tomorrow. There's so much charm packed into this magical adventure, from the funny (and sometimes irreverent) writing to the lo-fi but colorful visuals. The island꧙ is an open wಌorld, and it feels like there's plenty of routes that are fun to learn. This demo is a great way to get a feel for things, and decide if broom riding is for you.

1. Prologue: Go Wayback

Developer: PLAYERUNKNOWN Productions
Release date: TBC

We've written about before, but we can't resist, well, erm, coming back. Thankfully, accessing the demo doesn't require compass-based navigation, because if this harsh orienteering game is anything to go by, it's something we struggle with. This comes from the PUBG creator, and while it's a far cry from a battle royale – this is a single-player challenge – it has a similar simplicity. All you have to do is reach a weather station. But with few resources and not a lot of information to go on, actuall༒y findi🍌ng it and making it there in one piece is where the challenge lies. Think you can manage it? Well, give it a try th🙈en꧑!

For more exciting future releases, check out our guides on all the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming PC games on the horizon.

And Journey is the game that Herdling immediately jumps to mind when I play through this introduction. I'm well aware developer Okomotive is a master at games about moving forward – they also developed Far: Lone Sails, after all. But this shift into explorable 3D environments, away from side-on, reminds me of the atmospheric PS3 must-play. You can see what you think for yourself with the demo as well – and can find out more about this season's demos in our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide.

With the herd

The opening of Herdlℱing has me stumbling upon my first calicorn – the creatures you titularly herd – near where I'm sleeping, scooping up a stick to help remove a bucket that's stuck to its head. Instantly befriended and named (you can pick names for each herd member yourself), the stick turns into a shepherding stick and we move through urban backstreets, sometimes having to push obstacles out of the way, and pick up some more lost calicorn. Near the outskirts, they gaze upon a poster showing a snowy mountain. The mission ಌbecomes immediately clear. Get! Them! Home!

You can pet the calicorn and even clean them up when they get dirty. The process of growing familiar with each herdling reminds me of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Last Guardian – though their AI is far less punishing. They know to stick close, and when to shuffle over to help🔯 push heavy objects. Tapping the right trigger or holding it down to set a herd point ahead of the group is simple and they follow it easily enough. You'll love them without growing frustrated. (Though for The Last Guardian haters out there I still think it's a skill issue – Trico did nothing wrong!).

Quickly exiting the city, we enter nearby fields. Herding them across blue flowers causes each calicorn to glow with energy – their moods change the color of their fur. Able to charge up the shepherd gesture, you can command them to stampede (sort of an oxymoron but go with it) to hit higher speeds, skipping along behind them. Moving through more🌱 fields of blue keeps it going. 𝓰The music kicks in, swelling to fit the faster movement – it's such a great feeling.

But it's not all rushing through fields with abandon. Thicker bushes can make it tougher to progress – and you command them to bash 🎃their way through (though you may need to help clean up twigs and such that get stuck to their coat). You may also need to ask them to stop, or slow down, to avoid getting hurt. Outside the city doesn't mean there's no human presence at all. Though the spaces are wide, you're still funnelled forward linearly, meaning you ဣneed to at times navigate human structures. A train yard, for instance, has plenty of carriages to push and nasty rusty metal spikes you want to avoid running into. Later, darting through a forest, we need to pick across an abandoned motorway.

I love the vibes and the rhythm of play so far, and I'm already loving the herd I've assembled. I just want to get them to where they deserve to be. When the chance to get them up that mountain comes, you know I'll be leading the way. , PS5, and Xbox Series X/S later in 2025.

My dream The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time successor is finally playable in Steam Next Fest, and I'm pleased to report it nails the Nintendo 64 vibes

Moonlighter 2 kicks oܫff not long after the somewhat apocalyptic events of the first game, but this time in a new world. I won't go into specifics as to exactly what happens, but if you want a (spoiler-filled) rundown, you'll find it right at the start of the game. Suffice to say that protagonist Will returns, in a new store with a landlord who's pretty keen on getting as much cash from him as possible.

That means that the store has to open, and Will has to find stock to put in it. With the help of the local blacksmith and potion seller, you'll hav🌺e to dive into a portal, slaying the foes that lie within to collect the treasure that awaits at the end of each stage. Combat is a case of dodge-rolling around ranged attacks or beyond melee hits, weaving your own sword slashes between your enemies' onslaughts and using them to charge your own goopy ranged weapon.

It's decent fun (even if some of the platforming sections had me fuming), but it's immediately elevated by Moonlighter 2's risk vs reward payoff. You hꩵave the option to end your run at any time, teleporting back to town with whatever loot you've been able to pick up already. That means that every decision to go onwards is laced with a touch of danger - if you don't manage to escape safely with your loot, it'll lose a lot of its resale value late✱r.

Even holding onto loot is an interesting balancing act. The demo only gives you access to a relatively small backpack, which means that picking which loot to keep is an important decision. That's especially important because certain items synergize with others - in a recent run, I stacked up two items that would trigger their effect - adding their sell value to any🐈 normally-worthless Firewood in your pack - only when you arrived home.

That meant I was incentivized to fill my pack with kindling. Normally, Firewood is only worth a single gold piece, a price so low that it's not really worth picking up unless you already have a way to augment its price. But h🍸aving two of those items meant that I added 300 gold to each piece of wood once I got 𝔍back to town, turning this worthless fodder into high-value items that I could shift for hundreds at a time.

That price gouging only got better once I laid out my wares. Once you've collected your relics and returned to town, Moonlighter 2 becomes a shop management sim in which you can build on the combos you've already established in your pack. Each sales opportunity lets you use Will's natural charm to bump up the price a little further by sweet-talking your customers, and boons earned over the course of each day stack up. In the end, one of those humble pieces of firewood might sell for 1000 times its original value, as a concoction of different effects all combine to drive up its pr💖ice.

The actual selling was the part of Moonlighter 2 I was least interested in at the start, but as soon as I was given a target to aim for - 5000 gold earned in a single day - I was doing everything I could to push♒ my wares as hard as they could go. Making sure to keep the shop as tidy as possible, all while rushing to replenish sold itౠems and keep busy customers happy quickly became a task almost as fraught as battling my way through the mobs I'd earned the relics from in the first place.

I already knew that Moonlighter 2 was pretty much two games in one - a r꧂oguelike combined with a management sim. What I didn't appreciate was that it was actually three games in one, with an effective inventory management game thrown in for good measure. Strangely, I think it shines brightest outside of the action - the roguelike is fun, but with so little of its upgrade paths av꧅ailable in the demo it was a bit limited. By contrast, I had far more fun than I expected in sorting out my pack and running the store - so much so that I'm pretty sure it's time I go back and check the original game out for myself.

Check out our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best roguelike games.

Indeed, squint while you look at Azaran: Islands of the Jinn, developed by Benji, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you were looking at The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Azaran definitely has its own unique twists and designs, but its heart piece is one that beats for those classics. You can play a chunk of the game's opening dungeon for yourself as well (check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide for more on this season's demo hunting).

Great fairy's mask

Wrecked in an archipelago and on the hunt for a magical astrolabe, the demo for Azaran: Islands of the Jinn throws you into the tutorial dungeon with nary an item to your name. Which mean this opening slice plays out like a lot of early Zelda dungeons, having you track down simple items to unravel your route through the dungeon. Eventually, though, I pick up both a sword and shield, a bow, and some bombs – Azaran throws a lot at you quickly, meaning I wonder how it ♑will be paced past this poi🦹nt.

Plenty scratches that Zelda itch, from the puzzle design to the little roll you can do as you run around, and even the way the camera acts when you walk from room to room. In combat, the lock-on 🥀even feels an awful lot like Z-targeting in the Nintendo 64 Zelda games. Even the sound design has a crunchy, compressed edge. I love it. Yet, at the same time, the Arabian-nights style theming gives Azaran it s own personality, and a friendly approach to how arrows, bombs, and the like a♍re doled out keeps things moving. I do wish there was a map, though, which seems curiously absent in the demo.

While this opening dungeon ends right before what seems to be its final boss, teasing the full experience, there is ✱a mini-boss encounter. It's a fun encounter with a bit of a gimmick to it beyond the shield-blocking and sword-slashing that you use to deal with other enemies. Spinning around, it's a bomb-flinging jar. Having to pick up the exploding projectiles and throw them back in feels like peak 90s boss design to me, which is exactly what Azaran is going for.

There's still a lot I don't know about Azaran, but this short but sweet opening dungeon is off to a promising start. Just having the controller in my hands and running around the space felt like a homecoming to the Nintendo 64 style classic games of old – and exactly what I've been craving modern Zelda returns to for a long time. That's why I ended up spending over $400 on a Nintendo Switch 2, after all – juꦓst to play The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker again. I can't wait to see more from Azaran – which pr💧omises lots more dungeons and items, and a "tropical-themed" overworld.

launches on PC at a date to be announced.

You can play the RPG that inspired Undertale during Steam Next Fest and it even features the work of Toby Fox himself

After Inc is a mashup between a🦄 traditional city-builder and a 4X strategy game, in which your settlement gradually spills out as you look for new resources to take advantage of. From extremely humble beginnings huddled around a fire pit in a bunch of lean-to tents, youꦗ can expand through the fog of war, searching for forests to provide building material, or settling grassland to convert to farms.

It's a relatively simple test of ensuring that your demand for resources never outstrips your supply. Water, food, and fuel a꧙re all important, but thankfully, it's not too hard to stay ahead of them, as long as you manage your Stamina meter, which affects how quickly you can perform certain actions. Stamina refills over time, and moves faster the higher your population is, giving you an easy resource to sacrifice if you need something else fast - sending someone out scavenging for food might not be as efficient as establishing a farm, but it might just get you through a tricky winter.

Elsewhere, city-builder staples like Morale and Authority help shape your hold over your settlement, as do random events. These can vary between an outbreak of food poisoning that needs curing or a winter storm that threatens to ruin food supplies. There aren't that many of them in the demo, so you're likely to see the same few multiple times - in one run, I lost the chance to discover the concept of pickling food three times, and I threw out a lot of bad supplies in the process.

That's partly because there's usually a pretty obvious best choice. If someone's suffering from food poisoning, it's usually best to spend a little extra water to maintain their health and the town's morale. If there's a chance you get a massive boost to your food production just by throwing out a little extra rotten chow, then it makes sense to take it. And if a pack of wild dogs provides a boost to both morale and your supplies just because you m🧔isinterpreted what 'hot dogs' were in the time before the Plague, then is it really wroꦗng to eat them?

Morals aside, that 'best-case' approach tends to keep After Inc pretty relaxed, at least on its normal difficulty. Its largely pastoral, solarpunk aesthetic works nicely on a mobile-first UI that's made the jump to PC very easily, and the endless mode that will be available with the full game seems like a very chill way to keep a post-apocalyptic city running i🅘n perpetuity. Even fighting off the zombies that lurk in the fog of war is a pretty stress-free process - if you don't disturb them, they're unlikely to disturb you, and clearing them out of areas you want to expand into is simply a case of sending your fighters off to battle in some distant zone.

After Inc has found its way almost to the very top of Steam Next Fest's city-builder charts, currently sitting in second place behind an extremely pretty voxel-based builder that somehow seems to boast even better vibes than this demo. Much of that probably comes from the Plague Inc affiliation, and the mobile-first control scheme can't hurt☂ either. It's likely far from the most complex strategy game you'll find in this latest round of demos, but it's a relaxing, tabletop-style approach to the post-apocalypse that I certainly enjoyed.

Elsewhere in Next Fest, you can play the RPG that inspired Undertale, featuring the work of Toby Fox.

Stellar Blade spent a good amount of this week right at the top of the charts, vying with a soulslike M🎀MORPG revival for the very top spot. But looking at those same charts today, Stellar Blade is nowhere to be seen. Despite having dominated during the first half of the week, Stellar Blade's official release yesterday means that it's no longer el🅠igible - all🦩 three of Steam Next Fest's major charts "only include games not yet released on Steam." Stellar Blade no longer falls into that category, so it's no longer on the charts.

You can still play the demo, but the removal of one of the biggest entries means that the Steam Next Fest hierarchy is in a pretty wild state of flux right now. And while that MMO I mentioned is still sitting pretty ♈high in t💝he charts, one particular game is really taking advantage of Stellar Blade's absence.

That game would be Jump Ship, a co-op FPS in which you and up to three friends act as the crew of a spaceship. Engaging in both space combat and on-the-ground fights, the real selling point of Jump Ship is its seamless transitions from space to ship to planet. That's the kind of thing I really hoped 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Starfield wo🥂uld be able to offer in place of its repeated loading screens and limited 🌃landing spots. While Jump Ship is admittedly not an RPG, a co-op reimagining of the game I wanted Starfield to be is certainly a compelling pitch.

And that's something that I seem to not be alone in thinking. Jump Ship is currently in the top five on all three of Next Fest's major charts, and is currently right at the top of the wishlist charts. Interesting, in the player count-driven 'top demos' chart, it's in third place right behind a very similar proposition - Wildgate, a ship-to-ship combat game that seems to come with a touch of REPO energy. Clearly, between that and Stellar⭕ Blade, th🐻e Steam Next Fest players yearn for the stars.

Take a look at our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Stellar Blade review to see if you fancy the jump to PC.

Prologue: Go Wayback is supposed to be "as hard a survival game as you can make," but its premise is simple. Starting from one point in its machine-generated wilderness, you have to make your way to a weather tower, which can be found on the highest point on the map. That map is inspired by the Czechian countryside, and is around the same size as a PUBG island - an 8x8km environment that's being generated by the technology that Greene founded his studio to work on.

The trouble is, Prologue is keen to abandon several of the more traditional tenets of modern video game convenience. The most notable of those 🥀is a total lack of minimap. Instead of granting you easy access to a world overview, Prologue provides you with a functional compass and a world-accurate map. To navigate, you'll have to align yourself against natural landmarks - the bends of rivers, the slope of a valley - matching up to your 'real' orienteering tools to find your way.

That can be hard enough on a well-marked hike, but in the densely-forested countryside of Bohemia, it's extremely easy to get lost. And that's usually when Prologue's other real kicker sets in. It can be hard enou🅺gh to keep your body temperature - one of three survival criteria, alongside hunger and thirst - up during a clear day, but I'd barely left my starting location when the hail started to fall. Prologue is prepared to throw the very worst of central European weather, and while it'll offer clues as to when it's likely to roll in, there's no guarantee that you'll be able to find shelter in time.

Thankfully, the journey from the cabin I started in to the nearest shelter wasn't too difficult, but the bad weather combined with my flimsy starting kit meant that I was visibly shiveriꦕng by the time I arrived. Thankfully, there was enough food in this new cabin to stave off any hunger overnight, and a quick change of clothes and the firewood pre-prepared in the grate meant that I could spend the night toasty warm, and set out again the next day, mostly refreshed.

I say mostly, because even though my belly was🌳 fully, I'd struggled to find any fresh water to drink, and my thirst meter was getting a bit low. Nevertheless, I started out making good progress - the sun was shining, and I quickly found the steep valley I'd been looking for. I'd spotted on the map that I could use it to find a tributary of the major𒅌 river that ran through the middle of the map, and indeed it wasn't too long before I was standing on the bank.

Unfortunately, by then the fine weather had given way to a rapid snowstorm, and with the temperature and visibility dropping, I had to make the extremely risky decision to wade across the river. It was a decision that nearly killed me, b💯ut one I'd had to make - I would have frozen to death in the sudden storm, and I knew that I could find overnight shelter on the opposite bank, once again using the map to locate exactly where I could safely spend the night. I slammed the door shut and used my trembling fingers to shower a hastily-assembled pile of kindling with sparks, relishing in my rising body temperature.

But this shack had much less food than the last one, and absolutely no water. I was forced to set out early in the day in a desperate search for another shelter. Each one was marked on the map, but with a thick fog replacing the snow, my faith in my ability to find it was limited. And as my thirst built, I started to hallucinate, the lines on the map getting harder and harder to read. Eventually, however, despite the odds being stacked aga🐭inst me, I saw what I was looking for. I audibly gasped as I spotted the outline of a nearby cabin, setting off at a sprint. My only hope was that I could find something to drink as soon as I stepped inside, but it wasn't to be - my thirst m﷽eter hit zero just a few moments from the door, the post-death screen oh-so-helpfully revealing that I was exactly 13.993 meters from the nearest shelter. It was the final blow in a run where it seemed like the odds had been stacked against me from almost the very first moment, but I remain resolute. I have a week to beat Prologue, and by god I'm determined to do it.

I lost all my progress in a single catastrophic fall in this impossibly hard open-world Steam Next Fest demo, and I'm not even a tiny bit mad about it.

That's as much as I needed to know about the premise to click the download button with expert precision and get Dead as Disco hooked into my SSD (and if you want to know more about this sizzling demo season, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide). With a simple to understand combat system very much inspired by Batman Arkham, these fights aren't just a thrill to clear but have me chasing high score𝕴s already.

Feel the beatdown

The Dead as Disco demo begins with a quick tutorial confirming that – yes – if you've played Batman Arkham you'll understand the fundamentals. Ther🍎e's a button for attacks, a counter button that hovers over the heads of those attempting incoming strikes, a dodge – even a double-button press for finishers once you've built enough energy.

The big difference is the timing of the attacks automatically matches the playing song's BPM and, importantly, pressing counter when there's no attac♔k to respond to doesn't do a weird looking fumble animation but instead has Charlie Disco – the resurrected hero of the game who's looking to take down his Idol rivals – do a little taunꦓt, like pushing his hand through his hair. Now that's stylish.

You get a taste of the story mode with the Hemlock level – marked as an alpha build of the stage. Scored to a cover of Maniac, these fights against all manner of enemies from regular goons to shield-wielding hulks chop-and-change location to keep you on your toes. Stage hazards are introduced, seeing subway trains mow down both Charlie and enemies if they stand in the wrཧong place. From there action moves inside a subway car, side-on action mimicking the style of Streets of Rage and other beat 'em ups while maintaining Dead as Disco's regular control scheme. The action gets the blood pumping, but ends with a tease before the bo🗹ss fight proper.

Outside of the almost Mega Man-like grid of levels teased on the demo's menu is Infinite Disco. It's he🌌re I've spent the most time with Dead as Disco, as this generous demo proves to be essentially endless. Brawls in this mode take place in a disco-themed ring, with waves of enemies that get tougher the longer you fight, able to keep going as you please or see how much score you can accumulate over the course of the length of a song. Plenty are included, presumably from the full game to come.

But what lets you go even further is the option to import your own songs, setting the BPM to match your tune of choice. Undertale's Megalovania? A bit of Carly Rae Jepsen? It's all up to you, able to test out the super satisfying combat of Dead as Disco with the playlist of your choice. Still, I can't wait to see what more the full levels bring. But for now, I'm happy to keep spinning new tracks over and over. at some point to be confirmed.

I thought only needing two buttons would make this Steam Next Fest rhythm demo easier... I couldn't have been more wrong

is a top-🐷down shooter, very much in the vein of Hotline Miami. But here, you're on the defensive, holding your tower from invaders with your host of spells. I say 'spells', but they're not quite what you might expect. My incantation of choice is 'Summon Lesser Buckshot', which fires a shotgun blast across the room, shredding any foes unfortunate to get caught in it.

Elsewhe♎re, there's 'Enchanted Buzzsaw', which fires bouncing blades towards your home invaders, 'Chaingun Lightning', which promises to "combine the ancient magicks with an extradimensional engineering masterpiece," and then a very literal take o༒n 'Magic Missile'. There's a dry, if not particularly sophisticated sense of humor to this world - the Wizard's gruff, potty-mouthed persona lends itself to the rough-and-ready, flash game aesthetic of the demo, which includes a level in which every incoming enemy must first crawl from a toilet before they're ready for a fight.

It's not super-sophisticated, then, but it's shockingly compelling. Before I knew it, I'd put an hour into the demo, relying mostly on just a few upgrades for my buckshot 'spell'. It's not long before you can really start to dig into the score attack elements of the two maps available. I'd quickly got to♐ grips with the idea of juggling aggro, drawing in certain groups of enemies, and making use of the tower's geography - tables that slow down melee troops, or bookshelves and pillars that block ranged attacks - to balance my combo meter while staying out of (too much) trouble.

Over time, the shop lets you unlock some extra tools to keep that combo building. A forcefield can be thrust𝕴 out to stop incoming arrows, or even cause a missile to blow up in an enemy's face if it's timed right. A teleport spell, charged by getting kills, can be used to get out of (or into) trouble, dodging incoming attacks or chasing down a target so your combo doesn't run out. Add an upgrade system that encourages you to switch on the fly if you find that you've made some spells more powerful than others, and this becomes a much more sophisticated score attack game than I would have expected at first blush.

It's a timely reminder, right at the start of Next Fest, to not judge a book by its cover. For its simple appearance, Mage Tower Massacre nails its aesthetic, and makes for an addictive experien꧋ce that I'm forcing myself to put down - if I don't, I fear it's the only thing I'll want to play this whole week.

I lost all my progress in a single catastrophic fall in this impossibly hard open-world Steam Next Fest demo, and I'm not even a tiny bit mad about it.

According to Valve's own charts, the biggest strategy game on the books in the June 2025 Fest is Anvil Empires. Currently topping the daily players chart and at second place in the wishlist charts, it's certainly an early success story. Given its pedigree, however, that's not a surprise - Anvil Empires comes from Siege Camp, best known as developers of Foxhole, a 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:cult warfare MMO in which logistics are just as important a🐼s combat.

A chance to combine Foxhole's player-driven narratives with my favorite part of any strategy game - turtling inside my base while ♓wave after wave of 🎐enemies smashes themselves against my defenses - meant that Anvil Empire was one of the first Steam Next Fest demos I downloaded. But when I went to play it for the first time, I was pretty sorely disappointed.

On the Steam Next Fest page,💧 Anvil Empires appears like any other demo. It's only once you visit its page or start installing it that you learn you're actually getting access to its "massive battle stress test." That meant that the first time I opened it, the demo told me I'd need to come back in about five hours if I wanted to play, because that would be the next time that the stress test was actually active.

For the record, I probably will be back. And I also think that what Siege Camp has done here is pretty smart - using the kind of influx of players that a successful Next Fest can bring in is a really smart way to make sure your stress test does actually pus🍒h the servers as far as they can go. But I've also never seen anything quite like this in several years of covering these demos - with so many titles vying for attention, turning players away seems like the exact opposite of what you'd want to do.

There's clearly a science to this, and it seems to be paying off. One bonus of making sure that all your players have to show up a♍t the same time is that it almost guarantees you a spot high up on the Top Demos charts. And Next Fest is a much simpler way of bringing new faces to your MMO's server tests than a complex marketing campaign. But I can't help but feel slightly stung by Anvil Empires, even if I am still counting down the minutes until the next test launches.

I guess I'll pore over our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best strategy games while I wait.

What really sticks out to me is how much quicker it is to get to grips with Frosthaven as a video game – which is excellent as our impr⛄essions of Frosthaven's ♍tabletop version have been glowing, so the more people who get to experience it, the better. The board game comes from designer Isaac Childres, just as its predecessor Gloomhaven (which we also loved in our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Gloomhaven review). Frosthaven, like Gloomhaven, revolves around hex-based co-op RPG combat across multiple scenarios, throughout which you build up your central titular town. Our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide will show you how to find more demos, too!

Frost bites

Where it can take a while to get to grips with some of Frosthaven's more unique twists on th𝕴e simple premise with the tabletop board game, the nature of the Steam Next Fest demo ensures you have adequate tooltips and information to view at any time, all while you click and drag pieces and the camera around the small-yet-intricate maps. While all the complexity of Frosthaven's rules have been accurately replicated, it's just simpler to get up to speed with the basics here on PC.

It also helps that Frosthaven's UI is clearly inspired by some of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPG games, information like turn order at the top and for your party along the side of the screen making Frosthaven feel like not too far of a departure from the likes of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Baldur's Gate 3. At the same time, its tabletop roots are clear, with the small maps and hex-based grid clearly coming righ🌌t from the board game. Even so, there's a lot of animation – this isn't an adaptation that feels stiffly combined to replicating the exact feeling of a board game even though the rules are intact.

Controlling up to four-party members at a time – it's up to you how you want to split them with other players – your characters have their own customizable deck of cards (and equipment which can add extra abilities or effects). Each card has both a top and bottom effect, as well as an initiative ranking. Every turn, players select two cards to play, picking both a top and bottom ef🌱fect from across both cards, but only one from each (or can substitute a basic attack or movement option instead). Buffing, moving, attacking, even manoeuvring to the right hex to scoop up loot – it's all in the cܫards.

It sounds simple at first, but cards can carry quite complex effects that can take a little bit of time to learn. Do you want to take up a whole turn to activate buffs across both cards' top or bottom effects? Combine 🙈an enemy debuff effect with dishing out damage? Lay down a useful buff banner that'll power up a nearby ally's attacks to finish up a foe next turn? Choosing the best pair to play in a ౠsituation requires some serious brain power.

There's a lot of synergies not just between a character's own deck of cards, but how to combine th𝓡ose powers cross-party. Frosthaven, as a video game, makes the learning experience way faster by making sure you can visualize all these effects before using, and can't get things wrong (even though you may wish your plays went a bit better – there's always next turn!).

Further complic🌄ating your card management is a ticking clock dictated by the deck itself. As you play and discard, your card pool gets smaller – able to be refreshed tabletop RPG-style with either a short or long rest. But doing so means 'burning' cards for the encounter, permanently putting 🍎them off limits (likewise, cards can be burned to negate damage in a pinch). What do you hold close, or what do you let yourself lose?

Frosthaven does, however, have some easier modes allowing you to negate the harshness of this rule or even give yourself more health – it's a neat way to incorporate house rules into a digital version of the board game. So far, as someone who likes a layer of strategy in my RPG encounters, Frosthaven🦂 certainly has me intrigue🥃d, and this demo has proved far easier for introducing me to the system than its exceedingly heavy boxed board game version.

, after which the developers will spend about a year releasing more content from the original board game, aiming to be feature complete by the ꦜtime it has a full release.

Want more tabletop fun? Check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best board games ranking!

OFF's tone is immediately, well, a bit off. Inputting my name, I take control of the Batter – a person wielding a baseball bat whose task is to 'purify' the world one Zone at a time. Even early on, OFF goes to great lengths to cram a crowbar into the fourth wall, making it clear that while the Batter is controlled by me, the player, we are separate entities. Driving this home is The Judge, a loquacious cat who elucidates the Batter's mission while on-boarding me with tips (and inspired Sans in Undertale). It's a great opening you can play for yourself now, and our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide can help you find more demos too.

Off beat

The bold block colors and low-poly aesthetic immediately remind me of Undertale though, of course, OFF is the game🌱 that was released first. Undertale creator – and the inspirations are clear as soon as you start playing.

What surprises me more is OFF's puzzle chops that begin to challenge me from early on. While the likes of Undertale and more of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPG games often have some chin-strokers, OFF leverages its fairly sim🦩plistic systems to create some devious number puzzles. These often revolve aro𒈔und hitting blocks in the correct order by exploring and finding sequences of numbers. But they can also involve looking over what are essentially lore notes – one having the Batter peruse nearby posters stuck on a wall to learn more about Zone 1's history.

Combat too gets a lot out of its basic set-up. Don't expect anything as unique as Undertale here, but the ATB-style turn-based battles still have a lot of interesti☂ng twists. The Batter fights solo, but is able to recruit add-ons that operate as party members to dish out more damage. Likewise, a bizarre element system reflects the equally-strange worldbuilding – with metal, plastic, meat and more acting as elements. My favorite twist is simpler: the charging ATB-bar crackles with energy when charging a critical hit – letting you know you've scored extra damage before using it. It's a surprising tactical triumph. While exploration still features the original game's boxy ratios, fights are now widescreen – feeling a bit more dynamic.

Unfortunately, original composer ACC didn't want to use their work in a commercial project, so the original, iconic soundtrack has been redone – though with composers like Toby Fox at the helm justice has been done. He's🐽 responsible for a bunch of boss themes and also the normal battle music. It's a jazzy, electroswing number that tips the cap to ACC's stylings while also feeling like it wouldn't be out of place in Undertale, a neat mix.

This is a long demo, taking The Batter all through the first Zone – which includes multiple locations, a boss fight, and some very weird worldbuilding to uncover. Everyone you meet says strange things that hint at how messed up the world might be, and sometimes scenes cut to montages of old-timey (and presumably copyright free) illustrations that color the atmosphere. OFF simply has to be played to be believed. And now you can try the opening of this refresh for free – so don't put it off any longer like me. and Nintendo Switch on August 15, 2025.

Deltarune launches to 12,865% more Steam players than Undertale had on day one, becoming the top-selling game on Steam after apparently crashing Valve's servers

At the very start of this month's Steam Next Fest, Stellar Blade was at the top of🐠 the Popular Upcoming chart, which sorts demos by their all-time wishlist counts. It was also at the top of the Top Demos chart, which measures daily user count. But while its generally high profile means it's sitting resolute at the top of the former, it's currently been dethroned on the latter.

Right now, the most-played demo is for . Something of a revival of 2010 Korean MMO Vindictus, Defying Fate is billed as a soulslike RPG. It looks like the combat is stylish, and that there's a decent-sized open world to explore, but what's peculiar about this demo is that while it's topping Next Fest charts (it's in the top ten according to both other met🍸rics), its reviews don't rea♔lly match up to its success.

At the time of writing, Vicintus: Defying Fate's reviews are sitting at a 'Mixed' verdict with just 46% positive scores. A pretty significant chunk of those negative reviews are focused on performance issues, which, while not ideal for an official demo, are the kind of thing you'd hope and expect would be fixed for a full releas🍰e. But elsewhere, there are plen💮ty of suggestions that the combat is more style than substance, and that this soulslike approach doesn't really mesh with the MMO audience that developer Nexon is courting.

There's also a chunky contingent of re❀views - both positive and negative - that suggest the anime girlies are a big part of Defying Fate's appeal. There's an irony in this that I find enjoyable when considering what the new Vindictus game is up against at Next Fest, but I'll be interested to see whether waifu appeal can keep it at the top of the charts even as those reviews appear to need improvement.

Stellar Blade is already the third top-selling game on Steam more than a week before launch, and just its demo has reviews and players most full games would kill for.

As your samurai fox (or one of three other animal warriors), it's your job to slice through waves of corrupted fruit in an attempt to reclaim a sacred orchard. Conveniently, these fruits are hanging around in a freerunner's dream - an arena of tall, wide pillars that enable plenty of wallrunning and airdashes. It's a little more eclectic than the carefully curated freerunning arenas of Mirror's Edge or Ghostrunner, and the hordes of enemies make for somewhat less precise katana-ing, but it's still a satisf✤ying playground.

Chop through en𝄹ough fruit and you'll clear the stage, using the coins they dropped to buy powerups, like extra dashes, more HP or speed, or extra upgrades for the drone that accompanies you th🔯rough each level, blasting its weapons every few seconds to help you thin the waves of enemies in front of you.

Getting through the enemies quickly is important not just for your overall progression, but because High Fructose further confuses its vibe by having you create smoothies on t🐠he fly. At the start of a run, you can pick a recipe, each of which is made by slicing open the corresponding number of fruits. Killing two strawberries, for instance, grants extra HP and a seed that can be used for further upgrades, but choosing the recipe that requires four strawberry corpses summons some mobs that fight for you.

Eventually, you have a whole book of recipes on hand, creating cocktails of fruit-based buffs. The idea is to regularly switch between them, taking out one list of foes to gain their bonus, then changing to 𝐆another. The more recipes you complete, the quicker you can swap, and the faster you should get through a level, and the more coins you should be able to collect.

Eventually, I found a recipe called Cherry Cataclysm, which reduces the cooldown on your drone's weapons for 11 seconds if you can dispatch a few of High Fructose's snake-like cherry monsters. For the heavily drone-based build that I'd been cooking up, this was already e💮xcellent news, but then I stumbled on the guns that shoot bears.

Brown, black, and panda bears could now all be shot out of my drone every few seconds. And when I managed to cook up my Cherry Cat🎃acylsm, they'd fire even faster, until any attempt I might make to find and cut up a fruit was often stymied by a rampaging ursine that got there before me. Within just a few seconds, each stage was overrun by roaring, shꦡaggy allies who'd chase down any fruit, deafening me in the process.

Is it how High Fructose was supposed to be played? I'm almost certain that the answer is no. But among all the samurai freerunning elements, I'm impressed to see that it's actually prepared to let you approach its roguelike systems however you like. A given build might focus on enhanced speed or more attacks, but if you give me a panda gun I'm absolutely♓ going to use it, even if it messes with most of how the rest of the game was clearly intended.

I lost all my progress in a single catastrophic fall in this impossibly hard open-world Steam Next Fest demo, and I'm not even a tiny bit mad about it.

Baby Steps comes from a team that includes Bennet Foddy, who arguably kickstarted the 'rage games' genre with 2017's Getting Over It. But physics-ba♈sed suffering was not new to Foddy even then - perhaps his most famous work remains QWOP, a flash game which put players in charge of a track runner, and ta🍌sked them with completing their race while individually controlling their characters' limbs. Making it just a few steps was a huge achievement back then, and Foddy's bringing that same energy back with Baby Steps.

You play as Nate, a basement-dwelling manchild who finds himself isekai'd into a dingy, muddy world, in🍃 which appears to lose the knowledge of how to move his legs. When Baby Steps first gives you the prompt to 'use left analog stick to move', Nate simply tips forward, faceplanting into the dirt. From there, it's a grace-less, squirmy journey onwards, much of the time it takes to move your first few steps spent tumbling backwards, legs akimbo, Nate's grubby grey onesie picking up more mud and grass stains with every fall.

Thankfully, it's not long until you come across your first NPC. Watching Nate crash chaotically down from a one-foot drop, the friendly Jim immediately offers to help. Unfortunately, Nate is almost as inept socially as he is physically, and what appears to be a blend of acute embarrassm🎉ent, deep awkwardness, and bizarrely misplaced pride ensures that he swiftly bats away every new person he meets.

For the hero of a traditional story, th🌳at might be understandable, but in the grimy, largely desolate world of Baby Steps, in which Nate is by far the least caꦇpable person in the entire environment, it's obviously a mistake. But with no agency over anything other than Nate's leg muscles, you've got no option but to try and walk forward.

Eventually, after many, many falls and much squirming and swearing on Nate's behalf, you'll start to find some kind of rhythm. Granted, pretty much any bump in the road will cause yet another faceplant, but I began to work out the exact pace I needed to hit to keep Nate's right leg following his left, in a motion that looked a little bit like walking forward. Eventually, I even managed to navigate a high ledge, cl♎imbing up towards a makeshift camp to rest for a moment. Doing so took around a dozen attempts, a🐷nd more close control of a characters' foot placement than I've ever experienced before, but I made it.

Emboldened by my new ability to place one foot in front of the other, I boldly set out from my camp. Nate's grunts of effort and yelps of panic no longer phased me - I could walk now. Or at least I could, until I found myself standing before a single plank placed across a shining flume of mud, stretching away up the hill toꦏ my right, and downwards to my left. Aiming carefully, I put one foot onto the wood in front of me. The other followed. Nate shuffled clumsily forward, but remained resolute on his makeshift bridge. And then I swung my foot forward too quickly, Nate pitched, and landed on his back in the mud on the left side of the plank.

It took about 30 seconds for me to lose all of the progress I'd spent 30 minutes working towards, as Nate lay on his back, sliding resolutely downwards. Eventually, the flume deposited him in a hole right at the baseꦑ of the hill I'd been climbing. It's a fate that anyone familiar with the kind of game that Bennet Foddy helped popularize will be painfully familiar with, but I felt none of that pain. Nate's pathetic form had me in fits of laughter, and as I squelched my way free of the hole, I relished the chanc🔜e to retrace my steps, one foot before the other.

Elsewhere in Next Fest is You've Changed, which turns an innocent game of Spot the Difference evil.

Add in the possibility that the differences I'm searching for are outright evil, that I'll receive jump scares, and that my heart may erode – and all of a sudden You've Changed has, well, made Spot The Difference a more sweat-inducing proposition. In fact, the way it puts me on alert, flicking between each image that represents a room, reminds me of the original 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Five Nights at Freddy's – a gameplay loop that I have to admit I still think is pretty strong. 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Our Steam Next Fest guide may help yওou find even more demos to give a go too!

Look closer

While a Story Mode is promised in the full release to explain more ab💜out the Anomalies – the differences you're searching for – my time with the g🧸ame revolves around a simple tutorial and an arcade mode featuring one level with multiple difficulties: the house. Consisting of three rooms – a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom – it has me juggling changes across all three if I want to make it through the night.

The 8-bit MS Paint-style graphics lend You've Changed an eerie atmosphere. Something about the style always makes me think of cozy times, meaning this haunted perver🐠sion feels a little bit extra cursed. But, importantly, the lo-fi graphics aren't just a throwback to an incredible aesthetic, but allow for an extra element of clarity crucial in elucidating the exorcism-worthy alterations that come my way.

Each round, a stopwatch allows for some time to get to grips with the non-haunted layouts of the rooms. Toggling between single-screen views of each room with a press of a button, I realize I'm actually really easily distracted –🧸 trying my best to say out loud any key features I want to be on the lookout for. "Bin: closed. Two knives. Calendar has a smiley face. One figure in the painting. Doll on the cupboard".

Anomalies can creep in after the stopwatch has finished, after which you need to survive until the timer is over. Allow one to exist for too long, and your heart in the top left will slowly disappear (which can't be healthy, right?). Anomalies only appear when you're not looking, 𝓡meaning you'll need to steadily toggle between viewpoints until you feel like something is just off. Some can be quite subtle, perhaps a missing dish on the draining board, or a plant pot changing color. Others are much less so – a strange figure silhouetted in your shower, your attic door hanging open, or a great big tongue flopping out of your fridge.

No matter the change, you've got to quickly highlight it and mark the type of anomaly, such as 'mirror' for a duplicated item, 'extra' for something new, 'alteration' for a change, 'evil' for,☂ erm, evil, or more. You can try again if you geℱt the type wrong, but it costs you precious seconds. You'll quickly find your weaknesses too. While I can quickly notice if something has changed – if something is removed wholesale I'm apparently really hard at detecting it!

I've yet to really see much in the way of jump scares, though an adjustable toggle in the settings assures me they're present. Perhaps i💮t's a consequence of just being too good – though I do shudder to think of what may lie in wait in the full game. It seems the Story Mode may have 𝓀more of this.

Still, detecting differences even in this arcade mode does mak💙e me feel quite tense. The demo forces me to start on Easy, which does play maybe a tad too slowly, but does help me familiarize myself with the rooms, meaning by the time I do Normal I only succeed by the skin of my teeth. I just hope, come the full release, I'll♊ be able to retain more information about what goes where, lest I suffer some serious haunting.

eventually, with the date TBC.

Want more chills? Take a look at our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best horror games!

Unbeatable comes from developer D-Cell Games, and after playing the excellent Steam Next Fest Demo for a couple of hours I've not only gotten a taste of its punk story, but got to try oodles of songs in the arcade mode at varying levels of difficulty (included the extremely hard titular challenge level). Though the rhythm action takes place across just two buttons, Unbeatable is far from simple, and it feels incredibly satisfying to ace its tracks. And if you want to explore demos for yourself, check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest guide for more.

But let me unstrap the guitar for just a moment to do some tuning and get you up to speed with what Unbeatable is – as there's more to this than just a list of arcade songs to try. Unbeatable is set in a world "where music is illegal and you do crimes", essentially. Taking control of Beat, she leads the members of her band aඣgains♍t a comically evil megacorp-ruled world where forms of expression like music have been outlawed. It's punk by nature, every time you play an act of rebellion.

Nipping at Beat and friends' heels are security guards and an 'elite' duo who are obviously riffing of Pokemon's Team Rocket. While moments in the story incorporate songs to play like in the Arcade mode, there are also swifter variations that see you timing button presses to battle encroaching foes and so on. Likewise there are rhythm minigames specific to the 🐻story mode, from mixing cocktails to listening to the hum of a vending machine on the outskirts of town and allowing it to i🐽nspire Beat to come up with a new tune.

The story flows by allowing Beat to run around maps from a side- on perspective, moving in and out of the environment. Across town are people to talk to, activities to help out with, and collecti🌊bles to uncover. It definitely takes a lot of cues from similar story-based narrative indie games that have you running aroun🌊d urban environments, but that's no bad thing – it's a slick and easy to get into way of making Beat and the gang feel like they exist in a lived in space.

And action

OK, back to the rhythm game – which has its own progression track entirely separate from the story mode if you want via its arcade mode. How does having only two๊ buttons feel compelling? Each song sees the band take center stage, as enemies fly at them to represent notes from across the left and right side of the screen at the same time, with both an upper line and a lower line across each. One button sees Beat go high, another go low. And those are the fundamentals.

Things get more complicated from there, of course.🐻 As well as notes you'll need to hﷺit, there are plenty of ones you need to avoid – a bit like Beat Saber in two-dimensions. Plus there are plenty of notes you need to bash away at, or hold – and, because of the simple set-up, loads of opportunities for those hold notes to supplement more inputs on the other line.

Add in the occasional center note, double note,♛ and enemy notes that when you bash will then be knocked either down or up ready for a followup attack that means switching your line, and you have a whole lot of neat twists to deal with that keep you on your toes while also making the action feel like a thrilling punch-up. So far, whether enemies come from your left or right doesn't affect the required inputs, so I'm a little bit on the fence about how pointless the feature feels – but it does mean when playing for the first song you need to be extra vigilant from where notes will fly next, so in that sense it is adding something.

While I've been enjoying the brief taste of Story Mode the demo brings, what's kept me playing Unbeatable really has been just playing the 𒆙songs themselves. I love a goo🦹d rhythm game, and this simple-at-a-glance two-button system is really scratching an itch, and I especially like how much depth lies beneath it – almost a bit like the underrated Rock Band Blitz. Now I'm tuned up, I can't wait to jump back in to attempt to master some more songs.

, PS5, and Xbox Series X in 2025.

More toe-tapping needed? Check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best rhythm games list!

I was totally wrong. I'm not an Irish m🐼aiden – I'm getting pelted with const꧃ruction debris in Brooklyn, and all that's sitting in my hands is a demo copy of Analgesic Productions' upcoming fantasy game Angeline Era on my Steam Deck. Whoops!

But playing the dreamy "bump-slash" game Angeline Era, with all its creamsicle colors and monster s🧔prites, will make you extra sensitive to your runaway imagination. After speaking to developers Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka over email, I've gathered that th๊at's the point of it: this forest adventure is for Bambi-eyed players who've seen enough of triple A and double A games and want something else to crumble in their hands.

"Somehow, Angeline Era is the first 3D game ever to incorporate bump-slash combat," Han-Tani tells me of the combat, a type of fighting that fuses together walking into enemies and attacking them, popularized by 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:the Ys JRPGs. 💛"We had to figure out a lot ourselves – the feel, enemy sꦦizes, how the hitbox systems should work, best enemy types, what levels work best…"

In my time with the game's demo 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:during Steam Next Fest, its low-poly puddles and bugs seemed to bring with them impressive immediacy – these creatures, like real trees and weevils under the sun, are rough around the edges. This makes them tactile. Bumping your mini-adventurer into their butts to deliver devastating sword slashes feels ext𝓰ra satisfying.

"The biggest influence on the low-poly models are the enemies from the original Final Fantasy 7," Kittaka tells me. "There is a beautifully gestural sensibility in how the🃏y imply detail with big, craggy shapes and simple vertex colors. It reminds me of life drawing exercises, which involve quickly simplifying the complex human form into large three dimensional shapes."

The developer pair also relished being inspired by real life, hiking around Ireland to help plan Ange﷽line Era's layout and researching Christian history and apocཧrypha for the game's lore.

"I'd like people to come away with an appreciation for how the real physical world can be engaging and fun even with the simplest of verbs like 'walking,'" Han-Tani says. "Angeline Era's action is all 🔯about taking a minimal set of mechanics and letting the player try them in a variety of situations that feel different, despite being composed of 'Bumpslash, Jump, Gun.'"

"Something I think about in making games is just the enormity of small design choices," Kittaka says. "For example, I'm not an expert in ecology, but by going on hikes across Ireland,𝓡 I could document what kinds of plants exist in different biomes."

"I do think that the main plot of the game waဣs shaped by our trip," she continues, "but what's most memorable to me is the influence on small details. For example, we get to see what our protagonist Tets thinks of black pudding vs. white pudding!"

Angeline Era 🌃will release on PC and Mac some time in 2025.

In more adventuring news, Sony confirms Ghost of Yotei release date for October alongside a new trailer, with pre-orders for the open-world PS5 game starting next week.

I don't know why, but when I was a kid I owned many toys of heavy-duty construction vehicles. Diggers, tractors, bulldozers, you name it. I even had a JCB VHS that was all about working on building sites. Clearly, it's not just a kid thing, as RoadCraft is at number three ♏on Steam Next Fest's most-played demos.

RoadCraft is developed by Saber Interactive, the team behind trucking simulator SnowRunner, so you know the pedigree is there. In the demo, you can play three different missions that involve clearing,⛄ supplying, and rebuilding areas affected by floods, earthquakes, sandstorms, and more. The full game will have eight maps and many more missions for you to play.

One of the game's trailer's waxes poetic about rebuilding shattered industry and reꦗstoring hope to these affected areas, from sandy deserts ♏to craggy mountains to dense forests. What industries were here before, I don't know, but you'll have a hand in building new ones.

First, you have to scout the areas and then you'll clear away all of♊ the debris. There's both a manual and automatic mode if you're feeling lazy. Then you'll collect and recycle damaged materials and use cranes to replace broken and missing parts of the industrial buildings.

There are over 40 vehicles you can use, including different type🥀s of cranes. The game also boasts cutting-edge terrain physics so that surfaces covered in sand and water will react to you driving over them iღn real-time.

🌠There's a lot more to RoadCraft, from managing convoys to rebuilding roads to ensure goods can be easily transported between your different facilities. If you want to give RoadCraft a go, you can still download the demo on Steam, .

If RoadCraft sounds up your alley but you can't wait for the full release, check out our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best simulator games you can play right now.

A roguelike, yes. But a roguelike city-builder? On a quiet Sunday evening, I wasn't sure I had the brain space required to start micromanaging peasants, let alone when there were actual stakes involved. After all, I'd get enough of that at work on Monday (editor's note: rude). Nevertheless, I resolved to try out the demo, safe in the know🏅ledge that many easier options would still be available if I bounced off. Five hours of city-building (and three crumbled cities) later, that turned out to not be an issue.

The King is Watching puts you in control of a Sauron-esque monarch whose gilded eye watches over portions of its kingdom. You can fill the space behind your city walls with buildings that will gather or refine r🃏esources or produce troops and magic spells to use against the waves of enemies that approach to tear those walls down. The catch, however, is that they'll only actuꦰally do any work when you're actively watching over them. If I'm forced to turn my attention to the barracks to ensure I'm producing enough soldiers to defend the city, the farmers gathering the wheat I need to feed those soldiers tend to start slacking off.

The result is a tricky balancing act. You can move different buildings around, but doing so comes at a hefty cost to production, so it's no use at all when you're trying to produce an army in a rush. You can expand your field of vision to watch more tilesꦕ at once, but that's an expensive process that often relies on resources you might not even want to produce. Certain resources, like water, are key to expansion at the start but aren't worthy of taking up a spot later on - until you suddenly find yourself needing to sow a new wheat field over a dry patch of earth.

The constant push and pull between gathering, refining, and spending resources is balanced further against your need t🧜o defend yourself. New waves of enemies will spawn at a pretty sharp cadence, and while you probably won't struggle to fend off a few goblin skirmishers at first, their ranks swell substantially over time. Expanding your army is important, but finding room to house them in a city where space is at a premium is another weight added to the complexity of your resource balancing act. Thankfully, For the King offers an interesting tool to help adjust the fight in your favor - every few waves, you'll be visited by your court oracle, who will prophesy the enemies that you'll be facing. A risk-reward structure means that harder fights offer better loot if you win, but you can also sacrifice those higher-tier prizes if you need some time to rebuild your army after a bloody battle.

I stumbled through my first run, eventually meeting my end once the first boss - a towering and terrifyingly tanky ogre - showed up and smashed down my city walls. But on my second attempt, things started to click into place; I had a better sense of where and when to focus my gaze; I began to manipulate the prophecy system to actually meet my short-term needs rather than my long-term goals; I learned to arrange and rearrange my city to match that resource balancing act. Thanks to The King is Watching's upgrade system, I maꦰde it past that first boss, and then I got further still on my next run. Before I knew it, I'd chewed through hours of my Sunday evening and many hundreds of goblin marauders and was still weighing up how I'd improve my strategy on my next attempt.

Sadly, I ran out of evening, and with Next Fest over, I'll have to wait for the full version to see how those new plans play out. But I'm very excited for that - the demo seemed to be a pretty limited slice of The King is Watching, with more upgrades, enemies, and Kings themsel🎉ves planned for the full release. It's shaping up to be a deep experience, which is almost daunting given how much I got out of the demo. Coupled with some charming pixel art, it's ended up as one of my real Next Fest highlights, which is something I never would have guessed at while I was mulling over whether or not to even give it a try in the first place.

The King is Watching wasn't the only roguelike/city-builder to impress in Steam Next Fest.

Initially, I was a little sceptical. I loaded into a campaign scenario with a party consisting of four pre-made characters: a halfling rogue with edgy makeup; a bearded dwarven paladin clad in plate armor; an elven sorcerer with slightly-less-edgy makeup; and a human fighter to round out the team. My party - a group of adoptive siblings - were visiting a friend in a remote but bustling coastal town, but for all the apparent trade and industry, the world was a little sterile. Most NPCs couldn't be interacted with, and while 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Solasta 2's world is very pretty, I felt a little railroaded thrಌough it.

That was, however, a concern I was happy to gloss over, because Solasta isn't simply trying to be another D&D R💞PG. Instead, I knew that its unique selling point was supposed to be its devotion to recreating the tabletop game's combat as accurately as possible. So, obviously, I went looking for a fight.

It𝕴 wasn't long before I found it. A group of feisty, territorial crabs weren't too happy when I interrupted their feast of drowned Kobold, but thankfully they didn't put up too much of a fight. Even in that initial skirmish, however, I could see that Solasta 2 was trying to emulate D&D's rules extremely accurately.

One of my carcinized foes had burrowed up from the sand behind a r⛎ock, which meant that my Sorcerer was of little use thanks to a D&D rule that gives enhanced protection ꦗto units behind partial cover. With only a sliver of claw unprotected, I had to rely on my rogue to get up-close if I wanted to deal damage. That flanking maneuver meant the halfling had an uninhibited chance to hit, but since Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't adapt the cover rule at all, even this early fight offered a steep learning curve.

A few minutes later - having Short Rested the 'proper' way by using each characters' individual hit die - I was in another fight, this time against that♛ unfortunate Kobold's friends. This time, it was entirely my own fault - I'd snuck around to retrieve an item to let me avoid combat, and picked the corresponding dialogue options to placate my foes (no dice ꦆrolls to fail here). Wanting to test Solasta 2 on its own merits, however, I picked a fight anyway, freeing the Kobolds' prisoner in front of their very eyes.

Outnumbered and still nursing a few crab-shaped wounds, this fight could have gone pretty badly. The Kobolds were no great threat on their own, but in numbers like these they might have presented a problem for my low-level party. They might have, but for Solasta's interpretation of one of my favorite low-level D&D spꦚells. Shatter is available for all of D&D's dedicated spellcasting classes from level 3, and for how early you unlock it, its 3d8 Thunder damage is pretty potent. So when a couple of low-HP Kobolds clustered together at the start of the fight, I wasted no time in lining up a Shatter.

In Baldur's Gate 3, I would have hit my two opponents with its circular spell indicator and probably moved on. But as I went to aim Shatter in Solasta 2, rather than the 2D shape I wasജ expecting to cast, I was met with a big, blue sphere - Shatter's actual D&D description confirms that it casts in a ten-foot orb, even if Larian's recreation is a little flatter. That sphere meant that I could position the spell in exactly the right place to hit a third enemy, this one standing on the floor beneath the ledge that his allies were on. All three Kobolds failed their Constitution save, and all three were blasted apart by my Thunder damage, turning the fight immediately in my favor, even after some of their surviving brethren tried to use that annoying 'fighting from cover' trick on me again.

It was one simple detail, attached to a simple spell against enemies that I probably would have beaten with little issue anyway, but it was enough to sell me on Solasta 2. It seems to have very little of ꦑthe narrative and world-building depth of Baldur's Gate 3, but it knows that, and perhaps what impresses me most about it is the fact that it's not really afraid of that. This is a D&D Tactics RPG from a team focused on bringing tabletop combat to life rather than competing in the dedicated CR🦋PG space that Larian has come to dominate. If you're chasing the highs of Baldur's Gate 3's story, you probably won't find it here, but if you're the kind of player who's been busy crafting the perfect Paladin build since 2023, Solasta is a genuine contender.

Check out our list of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best RPG games.

Skin Deep has been described by journalists in the past🍒 as and you might equally call it a slapstick comedy Dishonored or a Hitman game with even more delectable, in-depth gameplay systems to mess with. In the most basic terms, it's a first-person stealth game where you play as the delightfully named Nina Pasadena, an insurance inspector how pops out of cryofreeze to "handle the situation" whenever a ship is taken over by space pirates.

Let's say it's just you and an unaware pirate alone in a room. You might pick up a metal bar - perhaps the one that was secur𝓰ing the door you just unlocked - and run up to bash him, but that's boring. Maybe instead you sho🌸uld grab a box of pepper, toss it at him to start a sneezing fit, and then hop on his back to repeatedly ram his head into nearby objects and computers. Be careful when you do though, because you can easily destroy information terminals with essential intel or helpful health stations in the struggle.

In one instance, I smashed out a window to send an enemy shooting out into the vacuum of space. I closed a security shutter to seal the hole and restore gravity, but suddenly found🅘 I was taking damage because I was walking through the shards of glass from the broken window. I peeled that glass out of my feet - those Die Hard comparisons are apt - and suddenly I had a glass shard I could use as a weapon against further enemies.

In another sequence, I set off an alarm and was being harassed by a flying robot that attacked by firing its needle-like body directly at my torso. I had just enough health to survive the attack and peel the bot's body back to, again, be able to use it as a weapon through﷽ the rest of the level. Damn near every object in the game appears to be a multipurpose item equally capable of taking out bad guys as it is causing your own doom.

The demo is pretty short with some fairly small stealth sandboxes, but I'm already imagining a dozen more ways I could've completed each area. This is a capital-S sandbox, with more interlocking gameplay systems than you can count. You can throw objects at distant buttons to open doors and activate otherꦡ pieces of machinery. You can squirt hand sanitizer to create a flammable cloud of fumes. You can crawl through vents, but they're so dusty you have to manage a sneeze meter that can alert enemies.

Those enemies can also keep respawning unless you figure out a way to shoot their floating skulls out the airlock - wait a minute. I could probably use one of those skills as a dis🥂traction and drop everybody's head down the trash chute at once, couldn't I? Hang on, I need to go try another run real quick...

For♊ now, you can check out the Skin Deep demo for yo🃏urself . The game launches in full on April 30, and I can't wait to see more.

SnowRunner fans think RoadCraft's Steam Next Fest demo isn't hardcore enough, but I just moved 3 logs 500 meters and it's one of my proudest gaming accomplishments ever.

Serving as a prequel to publisher Nexon's Dungeon Fighter Online universe, The First Berserker: Khazan is introducing newcomers to the series with a single-player romp. But unlike Dungeon Fighter, this one is also launching on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on March 27, in addition to its PC release, just a mere month after everyone's seemingly fallen head over ♛heels with its new demo.

After ploughing through its demo, GamesRadar+'s Austin Wood said it "runs perfectly🌺, looks crisp, and instantly feels good in your hands, with none of the sluggishness or delay that so often afflicts the snacky action games that I just can't quit," and also shouted out the ways it mixes classic FromSoft s🔯taplඣes - like bonfires - with combat that's notably snappier than Elden Ring or even Bloodborne.

We're not alone in singing its pꦕraises, either. The First Berserker is currently the sixth most popular upcoming game in Steam Next Fest's own , which ranks games based on total wishlists, and its demo has already garnered nearly 4,000 user reviews, 90% of which give it a thumbs upꦰ.

"Fantastic game, love the combat and art style. Love th♏e quality of life stuff like no loading screens on death, getting exp for attempting bosses and so on," reads one review. "I was afraid this is going to be more Nioh-like but was pleasantly suprised its only common thing is the gear drops," says another, "and those are rare enough to not clog your inventory, a✨t least in the demo."

See what else is on the horizon with our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 guide.

Gothic 1: Remake showed its hand in the still ongoing 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest - Valve's digital festivalﷺ featuring hundreds of quick demos of upcoming games - and it seems like a return to form for a series that's been MIA for decades. Not only is the remake's demo the third most popular game on based on total wishlists, it's also amassed almost 5,000 user reviews with a 'Mostly Positive' rat💙ing.

"Remaking a classic is always a daunting task🥂, especially for fellow fans of a game," one user review reads. "Fortunately, this game seems to ha🍷ve a dedicated team that understands the spirit of Gothic far better than other external studios in the past. So, it's a joy to report that this demo captures the tone and feel of the first area perfectly."

Others also shout out its commitment to recapturing the original's dreary atmosphere, while the complaints 🎃are mostly aimed at the demo's wonky optimization, which will hopefully get sorted out in 🥃time for the remake's release sometime this year.

Even if you're already convinced that you're going to buy the Gothic Remake, then its new demo is still worth checking out because it actually serves as a "stand-alone prologue" to the main game's events and "a brand-new story throuဣgh the eyes of Nyras on his first day in the [mining] colony." It's set just before your nameless hero gets dumped into the underground prison, and instead works to introduce the remake's updated combat and gorgeous environments.

For more, keep an eye on the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:new games of 2025 and beyond.

While the sight of roly polies and weevils usually makes my skin crawl, the hunched beetles wearing red spots, spikes, and acorn masks in Angeline Era's demo-exclusive overworld simply make me scoff. Their mushy minds can't comprehend the fact that they are no match for the propulsive strength of my bumping into them. This triggers them to attack, and my crop t🐷op-wearing adventurer slashes their little bodies apart in one or two hits. Therefore, a "wild Bumpslash Action-Adventure!"

With a pile of bug bodies behind me, I wander through Minecraft puffs of grass and dirt in search of more enemies, occasionally pressing Y on my Steam Deck to search seemingly blocked pa𝔉ssageways for another path through.

Sometimes, doing this triggers a screen ov❀erlay with a timer, and I have to quickly hop over tree roots and defeat a resilient enemy before being allowed to duck deeper into the dark. These surreal fantasy moments remind me of my favorite parts of irreverent, early Zelda games, as does dialogue from helpful beetles wearing hats, who confess all-caps truths to me like: "I CANNOT JUMP. I CANNOT ESCAPE. MY FATE IS SEALED."

As a pixel wanderer with big brown eyelashes and, as I mentioned, a crop top that appears to be bulletproof, I heed their desolation whil🍸e continuing my bumpy journey around smartly designed platformer levels. Developer Analgesic Productions, who also created the gossamery Zelda-lite , describes them in a press release as "an Ireland-inspired, lush world of forests and ruins."

"A world influenced by Irish fantasy and arcane Christian myth," the release continues, while the game's Steam description proclaims that "fans of Ysꦦ" – the JRPG progenitor of bump sysಌtem combat – should "take note!"

Indeed, there's a lot about Angeline Era's dem🔯o worth exclaiming about. Its no-buttons combat feels both meditative and mystical, while gobbling optional slabs of meat at dressing table checkpoints is completely medieval. This, to me, is the best kind of action game — one that prioritizes energy and mood over mandatory objectives. Most levels don't even need to be completed before I go ahead and grab a new weapon, or a strange crystal scale…

I'm impressed. Backed by a soundtrack that diffuses like a waterfall, Ang꧃eline Era fuses tangible combat with the gauze fabric of dreams because, as the game says in its Steam description, "life's not a checklist, it’s an experience!!"

This cozy roguelite tricked me into trying a dungeon crawler by using farm sim features as bait, and I think the Steam Next Fest demo has officially converted me.

This is a direct sequel to 1988's Beyond the Ice Palace, a 2D platformer available for the Commodore 64, Atari ST, and similarly formative gaming hardware. Developer Storybird Studio has given the IP a crash-course in modern gaming with gorgeous pixel art, a pitch-perfect soundscape, and some light RPG features, but is still a proudly retro ⛦experience emulating the pacing and intensity of the original Castlevania games. To top it off, the whole thing is built around our undead hero's whip-like chain.

The story starts with the death and subsequent resurrection of a heroic king in a fantasy land rendered in a lovely Gothic st💦yle. Understandably miffed about the whole betrayal and curse thing, he sets out to reclaim his glory and kingdom wielding the very chains that once bound him.

The chains are the star of the show. Hooks placed around levels are used for all manner of whip platforming and puzzles. There's a wonderful sense of tactility to it all – yanking open chests and doors by latching on and flicking the analog stick back, or h🍬itting flying enemies and treasures with a diagonal slash. Basic attacks land with punch, and your shield-breaking heavy attack is worth the stamina you have to sink into it.

Combat is exceedingly deliberate, with most enemies going down in just a few hits but taking a bite out of your health bar if you let them. It has that '80s and '90s quality where one bad mistake can burn your health bar down to cinders in seconds, though it isn't quite as punishing moment to moment. The demo bosses have more meat on their bones than, well, the bony skeletons I've crushed so far, but bring a similar focus on careful positioning, timing, and the deflecting ability that I constantly forget about. This is even more old-school than the new Gal Guardians, which I'ꦯve also enjo𝓰yed this Next Fest.

This is about as close to the original Castlevania games as you can get without licensing the IP, from the tricky enemy placement to the punishing health economy fueled by chicken embedded in walls. Beyond the Ice Palace 2 feels pretty linear so far, but each level brings secrets and resources to discover, rewarding exploration on a micro scale. The most alluring treasures are crystals and fragments used to upgrade 🌟your health, stami🌟na, damage, healing, and God of War-style rage mode – a shot of RPG juice to get the king up in the morning. Eventually we'll find celestial arrow fragments that unlock the powers we once wielded, tidily covering the Metroid half of the genre.

So far, Beyond the Ice Palace 2 largely succeeds in its vision as a game ripped out of time, but there is some jank to it. Vertical inputs work well in combat but aren't nearly as clean when grabbing ledges or moving up staircases in the environment, which can be finicky. There is a nice dodge with good invincibility frames, but perfectly dodging enemy attacks triggers a slow-mo effect that is so absurdly dramatic, so over-the-top in its zoomed-in cinematography, that K-drama producers are taking notes. It feels like someone physically yanks the camera out of your hands, and this happens all the time. I thought the g꧃ame was bugging out at first. It's genuinely disorienting and it makes it easy to bꦕump into enemies and take chip damage when you return to a normal perspective.

The demo for Beyond the Ice Palace 2 is predictably a little dated, but I'm actually really enjoying it. Faster Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight and Ultros (and, one day, maybe, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Hollow Knight: Silksong) have chang🐼ed my expectations for the genre, but this is an admirable riff on an older era. The full game is out March 10 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo✨ Switch, and PC (Steam and Epic).

I'm not saying this open-world pirate RPG is the Sid Meier's Pirates successor I've wanted for 21 years, but based on its bangin' Steam Next Fest demo, it's not not that.

Developer Innersloth announced Among Us 3D just last month, bringing the paranoid joys of regular Among Us to a first-per🔯son setting with three-dimensional beans. If you look extra 𒅌close, though, you might deduce that Among Us 3D is actually just a rebranded Among Us VR that's bringing the game to a much wider flat screen audience.

Among Us 3D will still be compatible with Among Us VR (but not base Among Us, for obvious reasons), and is the party game you know and love. "Grab your crew of 4-10 players and launch into a fully 3D version of the hit multiplayer game," the blurb reads. "Work together as Crewmates to complete tasks before one or more Impostors kill everyone aboard." Among Us 3D has native proximity chat, new and returning minigames with updated first-person control꧃s, and customizable beansonas.

And, to no one's surprise, its 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest tease♈r is making it a sensation once again. Among Us 3D is currently the in Valve's demo extravaganza based on daily players, behind only 𝔍the monstrously popular MechaBreak.

The demo version is already massive, without even showing everything Innersloth has hiding up its deceptive sleeve. Among Us 3D's demo "does not include all features or game modes that will be available at launch, such as crossplay... or additional cosmetics." So, who knows? Maybe the final product will be an even bigge🌳r deal.

Why not check out the other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:10 best demos of Steam Next Fest?

The game's called FEAR FA 98, a play on FIFA 98, and it's described by developer Celery 🗹Emblem as "Silent Hill mixed with FIFA 98." Given the whole demonic theme, I'd say it's more like Evil Dead meets FIFA 98, but there is lots of rain and fog, so I'll let that little discrepancy slide.

FEAR FA 98 is the weirdest game I've ever played without a shadow of a doubt, and I've played 澳洲幸运5开奖号♔码历史查询:Nothing, the game where you do nothing. And yet, it's kinda not also. At its core, it's really just a serviceable PS1-styled soc൩cer game, and mechanically speaking, there doﷺesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, at least judging from my short time with the demo.

♋You choose a character; the demo only lets you choose a hooded weirdo or Hannibal, but I can see what looks like a nurse and a variation of Pinhead from Hellraiser. Each monster has their own exclusive weapon and attacks, with Hannibal branding what appears to be a༺ pickaxe for some reason, and the hooded guy uses a torch.

And then you fight for control of the soccer ball, navigate obstacles while you dribble toward your opponents' net, and try to kick the ball into the net. Except instead of a soccer ball it's a severed head and instead of other people getting in your way it's demons and stuff. Basically, aside from everything about it, it's just a normal soccer ga🤪me, and a pretty fun one at that! I especially like little conveniences like the trail of blood coming from the head that distinguishes it from the rest of the field to make it easier to see.

It's worth noting that the versi♎on of the demo I played had some really weird AI-generated music during the matches, but Celery Emblem posted a recent saying the AꦦI music had been removed due to negative feedback.

There's a lengthy disclaimer at the beginning of the demo that assures there's a lot more content that'll be available in the full game that isn't in the demo, including new "mechanics, attacks, power-ups, and other features." Still, I had a macabre, surreal, but ultimately good time with what little is there. You're probably not going ▨to spend all night playing FEAR FA 98, and you might only play it once just for the novelty, but for the low, low price of nothing it's worth a download just to prove to yourself that this article isn't just a really elaborate troll job.

I'm not saying this open-world pirate RPG is the Sid Meier's Pirates successor I've wanted for 21 years, but based on its bangin' Steam Next Fest demo, it's not not that.

I'm no stranger to cozier 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like Stardew Valley, but more challenging, roguelike-aligned genres aren't generall𒅌y appealing to me – until now, that is. Grimoire Groves has converted me, with its vibrant art and whimsical gamepla🐎y loop, to a type of game I never thought I'd play, and I have developer Stardust's short but sweet demo to thank. Between the magical plant creature growing and the witchy undertones, I can't get enough.

Before I fell in love with the gameplay, I was swept off my feet by Grimoire Groves' colorful aesthetic – I mean, just look at those shades of purple and turquoise. Once I get past the hues, however, I become obsessed with something else: the fast-paced combat and spin on farming sim mechanics. Between unlock🐲ing spells and foraging, Grimoire Groves has players focused on befriending and growing whimsical plant-like creatures to restore the once-lush woods.

Stardust combines those cozy qualities with the more action-packed dungeon crawler-esque features near seamlessly, making them easy to digest for both longtime fans of more difficult genres and newcomers alike. I never feel like I'm struggling – or perhaps if I am, I'm too distracted b🐻y the cutesy colors and charming music to notice. That's probably why I'm hooked on the loop so easily, working toward collecti⭕ng and unlocking more.

Whether you're like me, a new player dipping their toes outside of their comfort zone, or are a seasoned veteran of the roguelite and dungeon crawler tags, it's safe to say you'll find a thing or two to love within Grimoire Groves' whimsical woods. You can play the demo for free right now on before the game releases in full early next month on March 4, or give it a quick wishlist to keep track of any future updates from Stardust.

Check out these other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games for even more to look forward to.

The game, a spiritual successor to the Delta Force series, its name presumably being a reference to the real-life Delta Force's dagger emblem, is about delicately walking the tightrope between realism and fun. It gives me serious Escape from Tarkov vibes: it's n🌸ot as realistic, nor quite as brutal, don't get me wrong, but what it does have is the absolute tripwire tension that defines that game's experi🌼ence.

Scoping it out

You play as a soldier that you name and customize (mine is an able fellow called Johan), complete some mandatory training on different weapon systems, then go to a ship underway in the ocean. This serves as one of the bases of Dagger Directive, an in-game special forces unit. Here, you can select a mi🎉ssion to play, choose a loadout, and then you're dumped in a Mediterranean-looking landscape on your lonesome. Oh, and the enemy saw you landing and they're coming to investigate. Good luck!

The first time I tried this mission, it went pretty poorly. I arrived and ran through fields of wheat, before emerging out by a small shack. I presumed that this w👍as where my commanding officer had advised me to hold up. No, he'd meant the much larger farmhouse about a hundred meters further back. I essentially bumbled my way into the enemy patrol, and I can only imagine the bemused looks on both of our faces before they opened fire and shot me full of holes.

Reloading, I went prone back near the farmhouse, caught most of the patrol coming towards me, and fired at them with a .50-cal sniper rifle, because go big or go home. This went much better, and after taking out some stragglers, I ran up the next hill, bumping into yet another patrol. which I took out with my pistol. Unfortunately this alerted♊ nearby enemies, and I had to essentially set up a sniper nest.

The thing is, the enemies aren't dumb. Far from it. Like the rest of the game, it balances realism (zeroing in scopes, range-finding, etc) with fun, and they will do their level best to find you, concealing their movement all the while. They'll do this by chucking out smoke grenades, sometimes worryingly close to you, and also by going prone. This made me realize how rare it is to find a gam🦩e where the AI is smart enough to actually go prone, making it genuinely difficult to spot them. One of my first deaths came from a prone enemy who crawled within a stone's throw distance of me and popped me in the face. However, they're still not über-smart, and more than once I've spotted a confused enemy firing in entirely the wrong direction, alerting me to his position for an easy kill.

Yet that's quite true to life, isn't it? People make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes are costly. Death, both for you and for them, is fast in this game. A shot to the face will take you out fast, just as it will for them. It really isn't cinematic f🅠or either of you – you're just kinda… turned off.

All of this is portrayed with visuals that remind me most of the early PS2 era. It's not hi-res ultra turbo death combat, but that's not an issue. I've never been one to argue that graphics make the game, far from it – and being a spiritual successor to a game that was last released in 2002/2003, it works well. It's also taken some modern niceties int꧒o account as well, like an incredibly long draw distance, allowing you to take out enemies from 800 meters away, and even further, if you're a good shot.

The landscape and brutality of the game put me in mind of something that's a cross between Escape from Tarkov and✨ Arma 3, but solo. Combine this with the evident Delta Force influence (its scopes work the same way, giving you a popped-out window to watch through, with the rest of your screen free to watch for closer threats), and you've got one of my favorite experiences of the year thus far. For anyone who is a fan of Delta Force, Tarkov, Arma or just shooters in general, you're going to have an ab🍰solute blast with the demo.

For more, check out our pick of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best FPS games you can play right now.

While the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Stardew Valley vibes are apparent right off the bat, there's more to this little gem than just farming. It feꦓels like a cross between ConcernedApe's beloved pixel-style game and genre classics like Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons, and that's exactly what prompted me to play Sugardew Island in the first place. Between the adorably rotund cows and the enchanting Forest Folk, I knew that I was in for a treat – and boy, was the demo one!

The map is arguably quite small, but I'm not too fussed about it myself, as Sugardew Island is a cozy game at its core – not an expansive open-world RPG. It features a simple gameplay loop, the kind I was itching for after playing what feels🐈 like every other available farming sim already, in which you build up a homey shop and complete quests to restore ꩲthe island. There are animals to look after, crops to grow, and resources to gather.

All of the go-to farming mechanics are present, albeit in a more digestible form. After all, Sugardew Island is described on as having been "designed for short, enjoyable play sessions" and "relaxing, pressure-free gameplay with no time limits" – a description I feel is accurate after engaging with the demo myself. This is the sort of title you pick up to unwind with, customizing your chibi-style character and living their comfy virt🎃ual life.

I'd recommend Sugardew Island to any fans of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:games like Stardew Valley – whether for its farming or for its resource gathering and upgrade system – and considering the free demo, I'd say there's no reason not to give the sim a💙 go before it releases early this upcoming month on March 7. For anyone who does play and falls in love like I did, there's also a paid available to purchase🧸 containing some extra cosmetics.

Check out these other 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games for even more to look forward to.

The delightful pixelated adventure from developer GD Studio is all about decorating rooms as you take on the role of a new resident opening their own housekeeping company. You set about bringing other peoples rooms together, with the creative freedom to set down their belongings in any way you wish. After tucking into the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest ꦿdemo, I frankly didn't want it to end. I could have spent hours upon hours pe𒉰rfectly placing knick-knacks and shaping spaces with furniture of all shapes and sizes.

Think the satisfying arrangement of Unpacking meets the room decorating and slice-of-life storytelling of 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:The Sims 4, and you have Whisper of The House. It delivers a supremely laidback life sim that's also stuffed with surprises that have left me wanting more. You may start off decorating kitchens, bathrooms, and your everyday living 💜spaces, but the latter half of the demo su𒁃ggests it's going to lead to some rather playful and unexpected places, and I'm all here for it. I basically just want this game in my hands right now.

Decorative delights

The decorating adventure begins in your own little abode that you've just moved into. Free to make the space your own, a TV-shaped robot by the name of Marꦜk helpfully holds a tardis-like box full of all of your belongings. Using a hand cursor, you can pluck each object out one by one and place it down to your liking. A shopping list of objectives sits at the side of the screen, telling you to make up the livin🌟g room, bathroom, and kitchen before you can venture outside into the city and put your housekeeping skills to good use for other residents.

What I really love about Whisper of the House is the way it lets you easily stack and rotate items, and decorations slot over others in a way that just makes sense. Have a blanket? You can absolutely set it down on the bed, or over🤪 a chest of drawers to add a home🌳ly touch. Got some plates? You can pile them up and pop them on a shelf with ease.

Once my own apartment is good to go, letters start pouring into a small mailbox outside my residence.▨ I get two assignments from locals in need of my particular skills, and while I'm free to go about adorable little pixelated city as I please – interacting with vending machines and finding coupons littered about the place that I can spend on more furniture for my home – I rush to get stuck into some more decorating goodness.

My first job comes from Luna, who's just moved to the two and needs me to set out all her belongings. As I begin unpacking and placing things down in her living room, I discover that I can inteꩵract with various objects for a bit of added🌼 fun – from turning on a tap to flicking on a light switch.

It's also pretty clear from the get-go that Luna is a big fan of Shiba Inus (aren't we all), thanks to the wealth of belongings that are either Shiba-shaped, or for a dog. I love that every little object can♌ tell you something about the person you're working for, from their i▨nterests to their fondness for doggos.

There are also some oddities and secrets squirreled away in Luna's house – such as a portrait that hides a hidden room. I won't spoil that for you much more, so all I'll say is,𒀰 be sure to explore every nook and cranny and click on🐟 just about everything as you go about decorating – you won't regret it.

The second house assignment took me in a distinctly different direction as I was brought down into a lab underneath that home that was completely overgrown with v🍨egetation. Thanks to a handy dandy portal back in time (yes, it gets a bit wacky), I could go back to the house before it became plant food and start organizing an old grandpa's home.

Falling int♛o a laidback flow, I lost track of time as I decorated every r♑oom just so. I've never been so sad to see the "thank you for playing this demo" pop-up, because I just wanted to keep playing.

There's definitely more to Whisper of the House than meets the eye. It's charming, chill, very cre༒ative, and it's firmly on my ꦐwishlist.

Here are the 10 Steam Next Fest demos you need to play this weekend

From developer Dogubomb (and published by Raw Fury), this rather generous 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest roguelike demo gives me four days to attempt to track down this room. Reader, I f🌱ail. I don't even manage to enter the antechamber at the back of the house, which is implied to be the first step towards figuring out the location of that final room. But I do get tantalizing close. I'm tempted to boot up the demo again and start four days from scratch with a fresh save.

But I don't want to spoil it for myself. Blue Prince isn't like anything else in the genre I've played, marrying together first-person puzzlers with a well-judged roguelike structure that draws me back in. Forget 2025, Blue Prince very well might be one of the best 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:roguelike games I've had the pleasure to poke around with.

Room with a view

Perhaps I'm getting a head of myself. Blue Prince isn't a laborious game, but it's one you have to take one room at a time. Played in first-person, you start out in an entrance hall each day with three doors leading away. With a blueprint map in hand, you know that the building is nine rows of five deep. What's behind these three🍬 doors? To a point, that's up to you. Approach, click to open, and you're presented with three possible rooms that you can enter. Where will you explore next?

Each room is different, and is a named, designed space. Each fits within certain categories of room, and both the contents within and the doors leading out may differ. A storeroom, for example, may be great for filling your pockets with coins, keys, and gems used to reach more difficult spots in the Mt Holly, but with no door leading out you're just creating a dead end for yourself. Of course, sometimes you can engineer a sequence of rooms where that dead end isn't just not going to a problem, but fits perfectly (a tucked away corner, for inst🍌ance).

Some even contain documents to read that contain hints for how to progress further, special items that allow you to reach even more items, or puzzles that'll net you even more pick-ups. Going one room at a time means that anything you can nab🦂 to keep your run going is going to be extremely important. Even your energy is a factor, having to scarf down food to keep your footsteps counter high enough. It goes down by one with each you step foot in, though some can also restore it.

Each placed room tightens the noose a little on possible rooms, running down your options. Simply keeping enough paths forward while avoiding dead ends is tricky enough. It's not just that you exhaust your rooms the deeper you get, but you can come across more roadblocks too. Locked doors require keys or even keycards to progress, and certain rooms require gems to spent in order to construct them too – creatin🌠g a balance between both entering and exiting rooms, dic꧂tated by how you decide to operate in between those two limits.

The challenge comes from weighing up rooms that might allow you to move through space relatively unimpeded but might box you into a dead end without the resources to move forward, with stopping off to hoover stuff up on the way. It's made all the more vital as some rooms pave the path towards actually unlocking the antechꦜamber at all. If you just rock up, you'll find the room sealed.

Hidden puzzles, special keys, and side-paths unravel even 𝄹more layers to Blue Prince that you might expect from the simple premise. Figuring out how to both unlock the antechamber, and then reach it, forms the bulk of my runs, where I manage to do either one or the other but not quite both. Even just four runs in – and some elements aren't present in the demo too, I'm told – things have already gotten more complex. I'm eager to jump back in. I'm certain now I know more about these rooms, I can nudge them together just a bit better the next time around. But then, where will I go next?

, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on April 10, 2025

There's more neat twists on the genre to explore too! This roguelike alt-WW2 Steam Next Fest RTS, Grit and Valor - 1946, put me in charge of a dieselpunk mech squad, and is wonderfully snack-sized

From roguelike city builders to eldritch doctor simulations, there are loads of exciting 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:upcoming indie games to try out. The Next Fest started on Monday, February 25th, and will run until Monday, March 3rd. As previously mentioned, a lot of these demos are t꧅ime-limited, and will be unavailable when Next Fest ends. While this list can't include every great demo, we've done our best to make sure that this list covers a variety of genres, so there's bound to be something for you.

Scroll down and check out💧 our picks for the very best demos in the latest Steam Ne﷽xt Fest!

10. The King is Watching

Developer: Hynohead
Release date: TBC


A game quite unlike anything I've ever played, The King is Watching meshes city builder, roguelikeꦐ, and almost idle game mechanics to create a unique experience. You have a grid-based city to build different resource-generating buildings on, such as a wheat field or a market, each of which relies on other resources to build or operate. Here's the thing: your subj🌼ects are a bunch of lazy sods who will only work 🌼when you're watching them, and to start off with, you can only watch three tiles at once, so you'll need to think carefully about where you place each building to ensure maximum productivity, lest ye perish.

9. Monster Train 2

Developer: Shiny Shoe
Release date: TBC


Monster Train was, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:until Balatro released, my favourite deckbuilder, and I'm happy to say that Monster Train 2 looks set to build on the original. The demo has new clans to play with, as well as new cards. It also seems a touch harder than the original to me, but that may just be where I'm out of practice. If you love deckbuilders and want to sample what is likely to be one of the best this year, play the demo and see if it tickles yo🧸ur fancy. Be warned though, the demo is hard to put down, andꦐ I had to pry myself away from it.

8. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown

Developer: Strange Scaffold
Release date: TBC

If yo⛄u grew up on TMNT, this turn-based tactics game is a real treat. Brought to us by Strange Scaffold, which seems an odd choice given the often-transgressive nature of their previous games like Life Eater and I Am Your Beast, TMNT: Tactical Takedown is an XCOM-alike with an emphasis on a very radical 90s approach to visual design, with strong mobility mechanics, morphing maps, and stage events; like a car running down your turtle as you fight Foot Clan through the streets. This may have happened to me more than once. It's fun, engaging, and totally tubular, dude!

7. Dagger Directive

Developer: Arcane Alpacas
Release date: TBC


This title, which might as well be called Felta Dorce, is an incredible throwback to the Delta Force series of yore. The demo throws you into a large map with an array of weaponry (after some compulsory training) and just, wow, frankly. You can pick any loadout that you want – I went in with a sniper rifle and an assault rifle, expecting a fairly easy mission, and I was entirely mistaken. I got made crossing a hillside, and after taking down two enemies with my sidearm, the entire nearby base was on my back. The AI is good enough to be a real challenge, using smoke grenades to cover their advances and the like, but also not smart enough to make you feel powerless. I'm extremely excited to see where this g꧅ame goes.

6. Is This Seat Taken?

Developer: Poti Poti Studio
Release date: TBC

A really fabulous and novel puzzle game, Is This Seat Taken? is all about keeping people comfortable. The people, in this case, little blobs in various shapes, each have their own preferences and it's up to you, as the hand of God, to decide wher𒀰e they sit or stand. You do this across a range of different vehicles and venues, ranging from taxis to buses, cinemas to concerts. The character traits are varied and interesting, including people who want to talk to another person, people who want to sleep, partners, parents and children, and many more. The demo isn't too difficult but it can be tricky to, for example, give someone a window seat and allow them to sit next to their child, who wants to🌼 sit next to another kid, when the buses only have two seats per side. Cute, fun, and unique, I can ask only one thing: Is Your SSD Taken?

5. Do No Harm

Developer: Darts Games
Release date: March 6, 2025

Have you ever had aspirations of bein🍃g a doctor? How about living in Innsmouth? Okay, that second one is less common, but in Do No Harm, you can't have one without the other. You take on the role of the town's new doctor and need to work out what's wrong with everyone, beside the Lovecraftian gribblies that you keep seeing during your work day. Forget evidence-based medicine, too – we're going back to bodily humours, baby! A really neat title that meshes Papers, P😼lease-style observational gameplay with insanity effects and quite gross medical problems, including parasites, everyone's favorite, Do No Harm is well worth a look.

4. Wheel World

Developer: Messhof
Release date: TBC 2025

Enter a world that is so bike-obsessed, it makes the Netherlands look like it's not even trying. This game from Messhof, the team behind Nidhogg, Nidhogg 2 and Flywrench, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:puts you into a beautifully 🔜cel-shaded world, gives you a rusty bike and a smart aleck skull companion and tasks you with becoming a bike master. The demo hints at a story involving legendary bike 𝓡parts and a tumultuous and essential event called the Great Shift (like a gear, you see). The demo's pretty short, but the racing is great fun and the world seems to have a really great sense of humour. Pro-tip: my GTA-pilled brain was tapping the right trigger to pedal, but you can just hold it down. Oh, and to make it even more razor-focu☂sed to my specific interests, it has a soundtrack from Italians Do It Better, the record label behind bands like Chromatics and Desire.

3. Wanderstop

Developer: Ivy Road
Release date: March 11, 2025

If you love cozy games, look no further than Wanderstop. A new game from the creator of The Stanley Parable, this is a game about knowing when to stop and t🍨ake a breaওther. In this demo, you'll stagger through woods and collapse, exhausted, before being rescued by a very friendly man called Boro, who makes terrible jokes that I still lov🥃e. The demo effectively gives you a tutorial for the full game, showing you how to sow seeds and make tea, and it's a delight. We all need a reminder now and then to take a break, and Wanderstop's demo is a joyous little slice of life that does just that, with some wonderful dialogue between the grumpy Alta, our protagonist, and the cheerily unflappable Boro.

2. High Seas, High Profits!

Developer: lexy.zip
Release date: March 31, 2025


Do you like making money? Do you like sailing the seven seas and completing quests? Then, perhaps unsurprisingly, given its title, you'll probably ꦓlove High Seas, High Profits. The gameplay loop is simple – find goo🎉ds that one town makes, take it to another that needs them – boom, you've got a profit. But that only scratches the surface – there are quests (for instance, delivering sacks of salt for a wealthy family's wedding, you can build ships to add to your fleet, and keep your ships in good working order. It calls to mind a more user-friendly Port Royale, or a heady mix of the world map from Sid Meier's Pirates! and the feeling of making money in Stonks-9800.

1. Skin Deep

Developer: Blendo Games
Release date: April 30, 2025

By far and away the funniest game that I've played during Next Fest, Skin Deep is a brilliant immersive sim/FPS from the creator of Thirty Flights of Loving and Quadrilateral Cowboy. You are Nina𓂃 Pasadena, an insurance policy made flesh, protecting ships from pirates in deep space. Oh, and the crew are all cats. Why? Who knows. Does it matter? Not one bit: it's worth it for the slo-mo "MEOW" they let out when you rescue them.

Yeಌt don't think that this is just an FPS that is funny, it really is an immersive sim as well. In one encounter, I made a pirate sneeze by throwing pepper at him, smashed him into two washing machines, removed his head, which was still very much alive and angry at me (it's how they ཧrespawn, I'm not a monster), and flushed it down a trash chute (okay, maybe I am). His friend then spotted me and let off a shot, but I hid under a cabinet, threw soap on the floor to make her trip and gave her the same treatment. It's got so much personality, and I really, really love it.

To see what indie games we've been enjoying in 2025, head on over to our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Indie Spotlight series.

From Milky Tea Studios (and published by Megabit Publishing), Grit and Valor – 1949 is set, believe it or not, in the year 1949. This alternate history World War 2 has seen the conflict continue and not go well for the Allies, with the British Isles now taken over by the Evil Axis forces. The advent of dieselpu🍒nk technology, specifically in the form of mechs and other superweapons, have altered the conflict. Operating from a Resistance HQ base off the coast of Scotland, it's your job to lead a Mech Squadron 💟to deliver an EMP payload to the heart of the Axis' forces and put WW2 history back on track.

Mech your maker

Which means your squad needs to go from tile to tile on a war map, making it through various objectives on each map while upgrading themselves, all while trying to ensure your mechs aren't too damaged to continue and – vitally – that the EMP-housing command vehicle is protected. Each objective revolves around waves of enemies appearing gradually onto each bite-sized map. Able to come from all directions, you must quickly reposition your mechs to best tackle the next group. A weapon triangle determines strengths and weaknesses, and things like high g💞round and cꦛover can help in a pinch as well.

Between each wave, a crate appears on the map which you can scoop up, though this may potentially put your command vehicle in the path of danger if you've not thought through the movement carefulꩲly. Popping it open reveals a choice between (often) three possible upgrade cards that power up you🌳r mechs, giving their attacks the chance to apply debuffs, faster movement, or even a bit more health. Some of these upgrades can even synergize together. One mech might be able to Mark targets with attacks, while another might then deal extra damage to enemies with that status.

But it's not just simple wave clearing. Extra objectives can also be completed – ranging from the likes of protecting civilian areas to capturing towers – which give extra currency for upgrades. Aiming to tackle tougher battle tiles, or going for choice-based events, will affect your ability to improve as well. On failure, you're booted back to the beginning to try again. Collected resource𒊎s can be spent to upgrade mechs with specialist gꦡear, and blueprints traded into unlock new mechs entirely. As well as opening up new facilities at the base, you can also spend to make the path ahead a little easier – paying to introduce cover into the British Isles map made a huge difference.

Real-time, the action is slick, and so far I've enjoyed getting to grips with the mechs on offer, trying to balan🍸ce mobile fast-attacking units with some slower, heavier hitters. This is one of those roguelikes where you definitely need to get quite a few runs under your belt not just to get comfortable with the rhythm of play, but also to earn crucial unlocks for that pleasing loop of getting genuinely stronger with each attempt. Delightfully moreish, this is a fun and snappy RTS take on roguelikes that turns what can be an intimidating genre into a lovely little snack. With the British Isles the only map in the demo, I'𝄹m looking forwards to seeing how the likes of Scandinavia, Western Europe, and New Germany will evolve the loop.

, and to PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch consol𝐆es in the Summer, so 𒁃there's not long to wait until setting out on another mech expedition.

Want more battles? Check out our 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best strategy games list!

Sid Meier's Pirates! is explicitly a "huge inspiration" for developer Concept Games, and although I love Sid Meier's Pirates!, I approached the Seven Seas demo with trepidation. I've alwaꦆys considered the 2004 Pirates remake untouchable and as close to perfect as you can get, so the idea of a follow-up never made much sense to me. That said, Seven Seas isn't a sequel, remake, remaster, or in any way associated with Sid Meier's Pirates!; it definitely follows a similar template, but it takes place in its own distinct world and tells a different, although similarly open-ended, story.

Admittedly, I think Seven Seas' art style is what convinced me to give it a try. In contrast to Sid Meier's cartoony color palette, Seven Seas looks a lot more muted and elegant, with a pain❀terly quality to its presentati💞on and rich, dynamic colors, intricate textures, and pretty clouds. I mean, just look at this thing:

Anyway, games like this, of which there aren't many, aren't really about the story or graphics, they're about player freedom, agency, and the consequences that come with that. You've got an open-world sandbox you traverse to get between 🍃ports, and at those ports are various facilities driving a robust and fluctuating in-game economy. In Sid Meier's Pirates!, you can uphold your nobility by choosing to build wealth solely through legal trading, or you can fully embrace the pirate life by pillaging the seas, capturing ships, and taking over cities. You can also blend the two playstyles, with the world around you reacting to your decisions appropriately.

That system is very much carried over in Seven Seas, giving you several options when encountering other ships in the seas and when docking into ports. Its character creat♋or lets you pick a Culture to identify with, although the demo limits you to Britain, and asks you to choose a Family and Trade from lists including Governor, Navigator, Merchant, Surgeon, Farmer, Carpenter, Master Gunner, Captain, Musician, and Cook. These don't limit your gameplay choices, but they do determine your main questline and give you some valuable perks, so you'll want to build our your character in coordination with your preferred playstyle.

With only a limited time in the demo, I wanted to get my figurative money's worth, so I haphazardly created my character, rushed through the first few quests, played some blackjack at the tavern, tried and failed to sink a ship, tried and꧋ succeeded to sink a ship, and then tried way too early to take over a c🌟ity. It did not go well.

Seven Seas is still in Alpha, and I only played the demo, which means this writeup is in no way comprehensive. That said, what I experienced was a Sid Meier's Pirates!-like and a seemingly worthy one. Naval battles ♉are laborious and require precise timing and patience, as they should. It's shockingly polished, runs great, looks great, and seems to afford you the same level of freedom as its inspiration. I'm not ready to call it a spiritual successor to anything just yet, much less one of my favorite games ever, but I'm absolutely on-board to play the full game when it releases in Q3 2025.

This survival horror Steam Next Fest demo doesn't care that its puzzles are breaking me because it knows I'll stay for the immaculate Silent Hill vibes.

The demo for 9 Kings has seemingly been around for a bit,ꦿ but the updated one is featured in Next Fest and most of its "very positive" reviews were posted recently. The game is billed as a mix of grid-based building where you turn "your city into the most powerful of all kingdoms," and card-based strategy where you craft a deck of perks, ﷽actions, units, items, and upgrades. It's all rendered in lovely pixel art and seems like the kind of hard-to-put-down snack game that could quietly devour an evening.

The grid is deceptively small: just 9 tiles to begin with, but with room to expand. Aggr๊essive cards might destroy a plot of land to buff the adjacent ones, or cause a soldier defending your kingdom to explode on death and damage would-be invaders. Your deck reflects your chosen king, which are almost like classes, and difficulty settings spice things up further. Other cards may replenish a platoon, unlock a new unit like a sniper, or deploy defensive buildings. It feels like a mix of politics, infrastructure, and war – anything goes as you compete with other kings.

Some seriously weird stuff starts to happen when you get into royal decrees, which seem to add passive bonuses or instantly d༒ish out gifts like extra gold. You can summon defeated enemies to your army, reduce the cost of certain cards, or embrace the cultist life. Hey, sometimes it takes extreme measures to fight inflation.

"Find ways to break the game and become overpowered," the devs advise. "Grow your kingdom in strategic ways, prepare for dozens of unique events, and ꦑshow t🐽he world your kingdom can last longer than any other."

9 Kings is scheduled to launch in April.

Someone combined Diablo and League of Legends for a roguelike co-op MOBA with Risk of Rain energy, and it deserves the hype it's getting in Steam Next Fest.

Solarpunk was pitched as a familiar survival game core largely enlivened by its setting: a fractured world of floating islands. You'll decorate the interior of your house and perfectly optimi🌺ze the customary farm, sure, but also take airships to distant territory in search of specific resources, harness the wind and weather for energy, and set up hovering off-island platforms for extra space or special uses. As someone who's become enamored with floating islands thanks to loads of JRPGs, something about Solarpunk's riff on the survival-craft formula speaks to me.

"This demo offers a first glimpse into Solarpun𒐪k, but there’s so much more on the way!" developer Cyberwave says in . "Some features and items are not yet included, and multiplayer is still in development. Your feedback is crucial in helping us refine and expand the game!"

What is in the demo? Cyberwave sh🅰ared a li✤st of what to expect:

• Craft your first tools, grow crops, and start building your base
• Use the construction system to create your first home
• Fly your airship and explore the world from above
• Harness renewable energy with solar panels, wind turbines, and more
• Experience a dynamic weather system that affects gameplay

This has been a pretty good Next Fest for survival games overall. I was quite smitten with the 澳洲幸运5开奖🥀号码历史𝔉查询:Minecraft x No Man's Sky mashup of Cubic Odyssey, which has a lot more🍬 guns than I a🤪nticipated going in, but an expected volume of spaceships.

Sol🍷arpunk iᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚs currently targeting PC as well as consoles.

This survival horror Steam Next Fest demo doesn't care that its puzzles are breaking me because it knows I'll stay for the immaculate Silent Hill vibes.

This is an isometric game promising "a fusion of MOBA-style controls and systems with action roguelike gameplay," and its demo is a whip-smart combination of so many things I love that it's managed to overcome my instinctive dislike🐻 of MOBAs. And I haven💟't even gotten to the 4-player co-op yet.

The demo begins with the destruc🎃tion of the boundary between the real world and the dream world, giving rise to a purgatorial in-between called The Rapids. Monsters pour out, our heroes dive in, and some villain 🍷sends beefed-up Hunters our way as curveballs on our procedurally generated adventures.

From your starting point, you select and conquer chambers to reveal more of the map, scrounging up resources, new abilities, and myriad upgrades to improve your build before fighting the boss at the end. Knowing what chambers to explore and what to skip is half the battle. My mind digs up lessons from Risk of Rain and Slay the Spire when I look at the mꦺap. Can I handle an elite right now? Do I have enough gold to justify a merchant visit? Should I just rush the boss and get out of this floor? Should I save this healing totem for later? S🍌oon, you learn to pace yourself and formulate a practical route to the boss, freeing you up to focus on combat.

I've been playing the default ranged hero for now because I never really gel with melee characters in games like Diablo 4, and Shape of Dreams definitely has that flavor of action RPG about it. It also instantly feels fantastic. It really is a PvE MOBA. Aim your basic attacks, space your AoE, stagger your cooldowns or let 'em rip for a burst of damage, and dodge, dodgeꦅ, dodge through enemies.

I've torn through waves of spiders, ghouls, and some kind of Wendigo boss. I've chucked fireballs, unloaded shotgun blasts, rapid-fired piercing rounds, summoned hellfire from above, cleaved through crowds with a sword in hand, and slowed groups to set up wombo combos. A staggering variety of skills is thrown your way, and you can augment them further with collectable gems or stat upgrades that tailor your hero's strengths. Again, my Risk of Rain sense is tingling: the buildcrafting potential for semi-automaﷺtic room-destroying mach𓂃ines is clear.

Shape of Dreams is the most-played action roguelike in Steam Next Fest at the time of writing, and I absolutely see why. You can add my voice to the growing pile of positive reviews on the demo page. This is a novel and elegant mish-mash of a lot of good ideas, and it's rocketing up my Steam wishlist. The full game is out in May, the same month as bizarre-o roguelike 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elden Ring Nightreign, and all of the sudden I'm desperate to play it.

SnowRunner fans think RoadCraft's Steam Next Fest demo isn't hardcore enough, but I just moved 3 logs 500 meters and it's one of my proudest gaming accomplishments ever.

Coming from developer Silent Games (and published by Secret Mode), Empyreal is an action RPG designed with knowledge of the greats in mind. Not quite a soulslike, there are nevertheless elements of the poking and dodging in combat that definitely remind me of the cadence of battles there, but with the speed dialed way up, assisted by plenty of flashy powers on cool downs. Meanwhile, the repeating-yet-different structure of the levels within the monolith draw to mind the journeys to new lands in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Remnant 2, yet with a🅰 much more bite-sized approach than the long diversions on offer there.

For the 'gram

That's because the Monolith you're setting out to explore isn't your usual tower. Instead, you'll have to find and plug in 'Cartograms' to unlock new chunks to explore. These re-combine themes and rooms into new shapes, telling you clearly before you set out what enemies you can expect to come across and what unique loot you can expect to find. They're pleasingly snappy too, with all the expeditions in my 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest hands-on taking around 15 minutes to clear, and likely a bit longer if you're really crui🦋sing fo🤪r loot – some of which is quite deviously hidden in nooks and crannies.

How tough a challenge you take on is also up to you. Naturally, tackling harder Cartograms will yield better loot. I like how clear Empyreal is with giving you data – you won't need to have a tab open with a wiki while you play here. I also think it's really smart how it alters the ratings for each Cartograms based on your loadout, beyond even just gear level. Some elemental equipment will have a tougher time with some match-ups, which is reprಞesented in the ratings it supplies you before selection. Setting out to explore a map for the first time you won't quite know what's next, but you're not completely in the dark either, which feels refreshing.

Likewise, in combat against legions of enemies, you have plenty of information to work with. While at times, if you're in a tough level, you're getting to be taking a lot of damage, Empyreal goes the oppos🐎ite way of something like a soulslike where it's purely about reading enemy wind-ups and figuring out what they'll do next and just straight up tells you. The attack name appears on screen, as well as the time it'll take the enemy to use it. Where 🎐the attack will land is also clearly marked. Data, data, data.

This works well for the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Final Fantasy 14 sicko in me, as I begin to find a rhythm not dissimilar to cruising through dungeons in that MMO, cutting through enemy mobs and dealing with boss movesets, albeit here completely solo. Having so much information readily available may be divisive for some, but t𝓀o me it's appreciated in a game that, so far, seems built around hoovering up a lot of gear by playing a lot of levels. There's only so much you can expect my rapidly hardening brain to intake.

Combat itself takes me a little bit of time to get the hang of, as Empyreal has a fairly unique cadence. Some enemies can hit pretty hard and can be well dealt with using a series of basic pokes with the a bumper button (like in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elden Ring or something like that), but at the sam🐻e time a well-timed dodge can completely negate damage and also send you ꦇflying across the room at high speeds. You're also encouraged to use your skills with wild abandon, which change depending on your loadout. Ranging from parries to absorbing health and big ultimate attacks, they can help in a pinch.

This early in the game (though the demo allows you to taste both early and endgame gear), I'm still getting used to the combat flow. Some situations where using a parry skill still ends up with taking big damage can be a bit tricky to figure out. But, across both a glaive build and a big cannon I manage to find a groove where I'm having fun running through either sequences of ro♋oms or some much larger sౠpaces – each biome seems to be quite different so far.

Melee is where I'm more comfortable – it sort of plays how you might expect – but the cannon can dish out some pleasing damage. Even if I currently find the reloading and aiming process a bit clunkier and complex to handle, I've gotten more into it than I expected. A little closer to something like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Monster Hunter Wilds than the third-person shooter you might expect, an active-reload system is used to also change ammo on-the-fly, and skills are even more ne🥀cessary than ever to supplement the damage of your basic bullets. Unleashing a barrage of elemental she🦩lls and a massive honking laser with the high-tier gear the demo gives me is pretty cool when I can get it to all work together.

This isn't usually a genre I gravitate towards, often because of the time commitment, but so far I really like how bite-sized Empyreal is, urging me to come back for just one more Cartogram. Only abl🏅e to explore a handfulꦚ of biomes in my demo time, there's plenty more to see. I look forward to seeing how it fares in the long-run across the full game, and going for another sesh with the 'gram.

, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

I've also been enjoying playing The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy: Dying becomes a skill in this JRPG from the Danganronpa devs, and its Steam Next Fest demo is already Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam

From Poti Poti Studio (and published by Wholesome Games Presents), I've been playing the really lovely and generous 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest demo that had me working my way through multiple modes of transportation, a cinema screening, a dine-in disco, and even a wedding reception, encompassing the Barcelona-set chapter of the game. I knew going in I loved the art style, with its monochromatic colors, chunky text, and people who are emotive literal shapes. But I didn't expect to get so hooked on listening to each shape's requests and puzzling out where to place them to get max stars. This is one of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best puzzle games I've played all year, and I can't wait for more.

Sit a while

At the s♒tart of each level you're presented with a location-based situation, and sometimes a little bit of narrative set-up to go along with it. You see, these shapes aren't completely abstract. Some characters re-occur, and you follow them between momenꦕts – one standout throughout my demo being an aspiring actor who feels like their shape just isn't fit for the silver screen. It's actually a bit touching, and not what I was expecting from a logic puzzler, but I love it.

With all the characters clumped up, you mouse over to see their requests, and then simply drag and drop them into place, able to rearrange as you please before you submit your result, each one🅺 you make happy earning you a star. It's easy enough to tell if they're satisfied thanks to those canny emotive designs, as they'll slump over sad if it's wrong, a speech bubble often reminding you what they're upset about; or have a big grin plastered on their mug if they're liking where they're sitting. Each request is often quite simple, ranging from wanting to be next to someone in particular, having a window seat, not sitting somewhere dirty, and the like.

The trick comes from trying to fulfil them all at once, and shapes who will begin to have multiple requests. Some levels turn the dial up over time, having multiple checkpoints where some shapes will leave and some will stay, getting more complex to complete until the very end. As the disco progresses, for example, more shapes want to get onto the dance floor, leaving me juggling who wants to and doesn't want to be close 🐈to the band's loudspeakers, and tactically shunting around those with heavy cologne and those who can't stand it. That's because some shapes will alter the seats around them whether you like it or not, from smells to just wearing a big hat (a no-no for the cinema, so anyone behind them will end up fuming).

Some are just tough one-and-doners, the wedding reception being a parti♔cularly devious beast (as a bon🃏us level, it's no wonder). A matrimonial powder keg, tensions are high as some people refuse to sit next to others, and yearn for certain foods that are being served in limited supply only. I'm not sure how much wriggle room this particular challenge has, as I end up having to completely de-seat a table before situating them elsewhere, one feud between two shapes requiring them to sit as far away from each other on the same table as possible lest things kick off. So far, this is a joyous puzzler that requires just the right amount of thinking while also being immaculately chill – this is like having your temples massaged by an expert. Sweet release.

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Want to give your brain over to pure chaos instead? Moves of the Diamond Hand has you covered: This 𝔍weird Steam Next Fest RPG might have more dice rolls than Baldur's Gate 3, and so far I've debated a talking fish, uncovered a clone plot, and gone head-to-head with bubble 🐼tea

As I find out playing the short Steam Next Fest demo, developers Gabriel Gonzalez and Curiomatic have dialed into the appeal of the classic 2D Sonic games from back on the Sega Genesis for the premise of this three-dimensional take – that it's all about momentum. Say what you will abo꧒ut Sonic's forays into the third dimension, but many of them haven't really considered physics in quite that same way. Here, in Rollin' Rascal, every dip and dive of a stage is crucial for reaching and maintaining high speeds.

Must travel quickly

As Rascal dashes through each level, you can turn into a ball at any point to, as you might expect, roll over the surface you're on. While no slouch 🍸on foot, this can often accelerate Rascal to much higher speeds, which can then come in useful when launching off ramps. From this position he can even boost himself further by squashing himself and then unleashing a burst of speed in one go.

It's a system that allows Rascal to use the environment to reach top speed without having to rely on things like a boost button, while still feeling just as quick as modern Sonic games (and don't get me wrong, I love a good boost). It's thanks in part to some well-designed levels that combine density of routes with plentiful winding pathways, and, so far, a notable lack of extended hallways to simply speed down without having to think about much else. Moving at high speed across twisting pathways under your own control means you really do feel the sense of speed, and need to constantly judges what's coming your w𒁃ay.

It also means it's easy to end up flinging yourself off those paths. Rascal's controls can be quite twitchy as he rockets between parts of a stage, and it takes me a little while to get used to. Even so, while I'm learning how to play, losing my way on a route often means ending up on another one. The demo level I play has pockets of really wide design in which I can chop and change the pathway I'm following to progress. It's something that only recent Sonic ﷺthe Hedgehog games have begun to properly explore with the excellent level design in Sonic X Shadow Generations.

It all ends up giving the level design in Rollin' Rascal its own feel compared to Sonic , even if the building blocks are definitely influenced by the blue blur's adventures. There's a definite appeal to feeling more in control of how you're moving through the space moment to moment – even if there's a chance it'll go awry and you'll fling yourself off, say, a bridge, it's all the more rewarding wಞhen you do see and execute the moves required to ride the momentum and end up just where you planned.

While Rascal's moveset means he can pull off a lot of the same moves as Sonic, there are definite differences too that alter the cadence of making your way through a stage. Robots can't just be bopped but also ridden, essentially allowing for a few quick seconds where you control the machine – perhaps a car to boost through a tunnel, a gunner to mop up a mob of foes, or one with big arms to smash open a metal cage hiding a dash pad. So far, with only a tutorial and one full level under my runner's belt, there's plenty more to see. But currently this stands strong among some of my favorite speedy platformers alongside the likes of Sonic, but also excellent peers like 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Penny's Big Breakway and Spark the Electric Jester. .

I've also been playing some other new genre favorites, including Demon Tides: Super Mario Odyssey and Wind Waker collide in this expressive Steam Next Fest 3D platformer that's already an early GOTY contender for me